Lindsay Lohan: Box Office Bomb

I’ll admit it, I’m happy Lindsay Lohan’s new flick, Just My Luck, bombed. You probably weren’t aware, but the movie opened this past weekend and took in a whopping $5.4 million, not even enough to pay Lohan’s salary. Let’s examine why this one did so badly:

Lohan, who’s already an extremely lucky actress, plays Ashley Albright, the luckiest girl on earth. Even though she appears to be only 19 years old, Ashley has a fabulous job as a publicist, a fabulous designer handbag, and all the fabulous trappings of a fabulous lifestyle in Manhattan. Blech, my stomach is turning with jealousy. The story sounds cute enough: the luckiest girl and the unluckiest guy kiss and swap luck. But when executed with someone as young as Lohan, the story is even more wholly unbelievable than it needs to be.

Lohan is completely overexposed. This just goes to show that being on the cover of Us Weekly every other week does not mean you are movie star, it means that you are tabloid fodder, and there is a big difference. The five people I talked to couldn’t name one movie she had been in.

The movie however, wasn’t exposed nearly enough. I told my friend Nicole that my next post would be about Just My Luck, and she said, “What’s that?” Maybe the marketers weren’t targeting my demographic, but I think I only saw the trailer once and read only one puff piece about the movie. (That article also made me sick.)

The producers reportedly spent $7.5 million on Lohan, and then could only afford an unknown actor to play her love interest. Surely she could have gotten one of her boy toys to play the role at a reduced rate. Her inflated salary explains where the marketing budget went.

The poster is obnoxious, and unoriginal.

It’s a case schadenfraude, which is the joy we get in seeing other people’s misfortunes. (Everybody is guilty of this from time to time.) I am getting way too much joy out of seeing Lindsay Lohan (and her mom-ager) fail spectacularly, and I am sure I’m not alone.

I am not ready for a world in which Lohan can open a movie on her own. Hallelujah, all is right in the universe.