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'Rock Of Ages' Box Office: Tom Cruise Film Stumbles, While Adam Sandler's 'That's My Boy' Flops

FLOPS OF AGES: Cruise, Sandler Disappoint At Box Office
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Managing Entertainment Editor, The Huffington Post

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As it turns out, audiences didn't want to rock. Despite weeks of pre-release hype, Tom Cruise's "Rock of Ages" earned just $15 million over the weekend, putting the musical adaptation in third place behind "Madagascar 3" and "Prometheus." The holdovers from last week earned $35.5 million and $20.2 million, respectively.

For Cruise, who stars in the Adam Shankman film as flamboyant and shirtless singer Stacee Jaxx, "Rock of Ages" marks his worst wide release opening since "Lions for Lambs" in 2007. (Though, to be fair, that film opened on just 2,200 theaters while "Rock of Ages" screened in just under 3,500 venues.)

While things were bad for Cruise, they were worse for Adam Sandler. "That's My Boy," Sandler's first Happy Madison-produced R-rated comedy, finished in fifth place with just $13 million. That ranks as the worst live-action opening for Sandler from a Happy Madison film -- the production company behind all of his big hits -- since "Littly Nicky" in 2000.

For the full box office chart, head over to Box Office Mojo.

Rock Of Ages Reviews
Ty Burr (Boston Globe)(01 of10)
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"Rock of Ages" is exuberant, silly, overlong, sexist; it's clever in little matters and proudly dumb in the things that should count. (credit:Warner Bros)
Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times)(02 of10)
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The actors are having a lot of fun, and the production values of the musical numbers are slick and high-spirited. (credit:Warner Bros)
Andrew O'Hehir (Salon)(03 of10)
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"Rock of Ages" is an effulgent celebration of fakeness. It isn't trying to be real; it's trying to be faker than any fake thing has ever been before. (credit:Warner Bros)
Owen Gleiberman (Entertainment Weekly)(04 of10)
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Most of the numbers in Rock of Ages are flatly shot and choreographed, and they look as if they'd been edited together with a meat cleaver. With rare exceptions, they don't channel the excitement of the music - they stultify it. (credit:Warner Bros)
Nathan Rabin (AV Club)(05 of10)
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A shameless crowd-pleaser where cardboard characters use the most overplayed and ubiquitous hits of the 1980s to express the aching banality of their souls. (credit:Warner Bros)
Guy Lodge (Time Out)(06 of10)
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As with Shankman's knowingly naff 'Hairspray', the sheer performance gusto on display proves thoroughly winning. (credit:Warner Bros)
Olly Richards (Empire Magazine)(07 of10)
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Like every one of its songs, it makes a lot of noise about nothing much and cockily straddles awfulness and greatness. It's enormously entertaining nonsense. (credit:Warner Bros)
Nick Schager (Slant Magazine)(08 of10)
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If the Adam Shankman film's debasement of its subject into campy kitsch is the unavoidable fate of all culturally dangerous art, that doesn't make it any less palatable. (credit:Warner Bros)
Justin Chang (Variety)(09 of10)
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Given the proliferation of high-school musicals and American idols on TV, the spectacle of aspiring young singers belting out an umpteenth cover of Journey offers little in the way of novelty value. (credit:Warner Bros)
David Rooney (Hollywood Reporter)(10 of10)
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[Shankman] succeeds in draining most of the fun from a vehicle that was all about the winking humor of its flagrant cheesiness. (credit:Warner Bros)

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