HOLLYWOOD - Easter is upon us, but it feels like the Fourth of July.With Blade 2: Bloodhunt and Ice Age already doing summer-like business, Good Friday offers something for everyone in the way of four divergent new releases: the tense thriller Panic Room, the dark comedy Death to Smoochy, the uplifting sports drama The Rookie and the teen-targeted sci-fi adventure Clockstoppers.
In an ironic twist, Jodie Foster and Robin Williams both released their last offerings on the same day, Dec. 17, 1999. Foster's Anna and the King ($39.2 million) and Williams' Bicentennial Man ($58.2 million) were hardly great Christmas gifts.
Foster looks set to redeem herself with David Fincher's claustrophobic Panic Room, but Williams' psychotic turn in Death to Smoochy isn't likely to reverse his recent bad luck at the box office.
In Panic Room, Foster stars a recently divorced mother forced to fend off an attack from three burglars (Jared Leto, Forest Whitaker and Dwight Yoakam). Foster and daughter Kristen Stewart take refuge in a room designed to keep out unwanted visitors. The problem: the burglars want what is hidden in the room.
A gripping battle of wills set almost entirely in Foster's character's New York home, Panic Room almost seems stunningly conventional after Fincher's inventive but ultimately disappointing The Game ($48.2 million) and Fight Club ($37 million). But Fincher tightens the screws to such alarming effect that Panic Room should become his first major hit since 1995's Seven ($100.1 million).
Foster--who replaced an injured Nicole Kidman--once again proves she can kick butt just as good as Maverick co-star Mel Gibson. She should beat Contact's $20.5 million opening--her best thus far--by at least $25 million to grab the No. 1 spot from Blade 2: Bloodhunt.
It's no more Mr. Nice Guy for Robin Williams as he tries to rebound from 1999's disastrous Jakob the Liar ($4.9 million) and Bicentennial Man. In director Danny DeVito's black-as-coal Death to Smoochy, Williams' disgraced kids TV star plots the extinction of his replacement, the rhino-suited Edward Norton. He also stars as a murder suspect in the upcoming Insomnia and as a creepy photo lab technician in One Hour Photo.
A hit-and-miss affair with several genuinely hysterical moments, Death to Smoochy is very much in the vein of DeVito's scabrous hit comedies Throw Momma From the Train ($57.9 million) and The War of the Roses ($83.6 million). Yet Death to Smoochy's release at a modest 1,800-plus theater indicates that Warner Bros. does not expect a foul-mouthed and nasty Williams' to amuse fans of Patch Adams and Flubber.
Accordingly, Death to Smoochy should mirror the results of DeVito's last directorial effort, 1996's kids yarn Matilda ($8.2 million opening; $33 million total).
Death to Smoochy could siphon audiences away from Showtime, pairing Robert De Niro with Eddie Murphy. The cop comedy dropped 46 percent in its second weekend, from $15 million to $8.1 million, and has $28.8 million through Wednesday. Showtime looks set to duplicate the lousy $42.5 million that Murphy's Beverly Hills Cop III earned in 1994.