I was going to let The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure pass unmentioned, but last week it was reported that despite opening in roughly 2,000 cinemas across North America, “Oogieloves” earned just $448,131 and is one of the biggest box office flops of all time, having earned less per screen than the average elementary school bake sale. Box office grosses aren’t everything of course, but the reviews for The Oogieloves have been scathing. It scored just 29% on RottenTomatoes, although a surprising 62% of viewers actually like the movie.
Intended to be an “interactive film” with full-body costume puppets, The Oogieloves were ushered to the big screen by Kenn Viselman, the man responsible for unleashing The Teletubbies on an unsuspecting world back in the 1990s. The film features guest appearances by prominent actors such as Jamie Pressly, Cloris Leachman and Christopher Lloyd and was directed by Matthew Diamond, who I suspect was hired not so much for his experience, but primarily because he was the answer to the trivia question “who is the cheapest Academy Award nominated director available in Hollywood?” (he was nominated in 1998 for his documentary Dancemaker, which to be fair is actually a really, really good film).
I was going to try to uncover the names of the builders and performers who were involved in this brightly hued mess, but I think that The Oogieloves will do enough damage to its above-the-line talent (poor, poor, brilliant Carey Elwes…what happened?) that further naming and shaming is simply unnecessary.
