British boy band One Direction's new documentary film "This Is Us!" is expected to top the Labor Day movie box office chart, thanks to thousands of excited young fans, the Los Angeles Times reports. How much is the film expected to gross over the long weekend?
The new 3-D concert documentary film is predicted to gross a whopping $22 million over Labor Day Weekend weekend, according to surveys of pre-release audiences.
The new film follows band members Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and Liam Payne on their 150-day world tour, a $10 million production directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Morgan Spurlock, whose 2004 film "Super Size Me" earned $11.5 million.
Just this month, the boys of 1D sold out four concerts at the Staples Center, their success in the U.S. paralleling that of theirs in Britain, where the band is currently a huge sensation.
So far, the new documentary has a 69 percent certified fresh score from critics on RottenTomatoes' "tomatometer," with 79 percent of Rottentomatoes fans reporting they enjoyed the film.
"It's mostly for the converted, but One Direction: This Is Us will be fun for fans - and it offers just enough slickly edited concert footage to entertain the casual viewer," reads the site's overall critic consensus.
"It's not easy being a teen idol, but the lads in One Direction sure make it look like a nonstop lark," writes Inquirer TV Critic David Hiltbrand, chalking up the boys' popularity to their "criminal" cuteness, as he feels that neither their "songs nor their rather nonchalant stage presence can explain the adulation they provoke."
However, some critics weren't so charmed by the band's latest entry in cinema. Willie Waffle of WaffleFilms.com calling the movie a" 90-minute commercial for One Direction desperately trying to convince us that the guys are mischievous scamps who care about their fans and love their mommies." Waffle accuses the movie as "manufactured and phony."
Rick Bentley of the Fresno Bee, however, praises Spurlock for stripping away "the hysteria to offer a glimpse of the guys to go with the energetic stage shows," though he does critique the use of 3-D as gimmicky, which he deems a ploy to "to get more money out of moviegoers."
"The film doesn't earn a place among the great music documentaries, but it presents its stars in 3D immediacy that likely will inspire screams and sighs, oohs and ahs, wherever movies are shown," writes reviewer John Wirt of The Advocate.
On the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), the film has a 3 out of 10 user rating so far, with some fans of the film comparing the band and their mega success to the Beatles.
