Bomb Report
Title: Bob’s Burgers Movie
Directed By: Loren Bouchard, Bernard Derriman
Written By: Loren Bouchard, Norma Smith
Release Date: May 27, 2022
Domestic Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 20th Century Studios
Cast: H. John Benjamin, Kristen Schaal, John Roberts, Dan Mintz
Rated: PG-13
Genre: Adventure Animation
Box Office Information
- Budget: –
- Financed by: 20th Century Studios, Fox Animation Studios, Buck & Millie Productions, Fox Family Films, Twentieth Century Animation, Twentieth Century Fox Animation, Wilo Productions
- Domestic Box Office Gross: $31,933,186
- Overseas Box Office Gross: $2,214,920
Official Trailer
SYNOPSIS
So . . . there’s this hamburger shop.
And . . . it might have to close because of street repairs.
Then . . . things turn out okay.
What went wrong?
When you’ve seen one cartoon, you’ve seen ‘em all. The Bob’s Burgers TV cartoon series is not substantial enough to carry a feature length film.
The great cartoon directors were Tex Avery. Bob Clampett. And Frank Tashlin. None of them were active after 1960.
The Hanna-Barbera Studios flooded the cartoon market with Huckleberry Hound, Yogi the Bear, Top Cat, The Flintstones, and the Jetsons, and thereby brought to wrack and ruin the grand tradition of fine art illustration in American cartoons.
Besides, the Japanese have the cartoon business all sewn up with their anime series.
And finally, Americans are no longer comfortable sitting through a two hour cartoon; when asked what they did last night, they will look guilty and say they went pub crawling or were cow tipping. Anything that sounds more mature and weighty than watching cartoons.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that
It’s been noted before, and by better brains than those behind this post, that the reason Surrealist and Dada art never really caught on in the United States the way it did in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century is because Hollywood beat those French artistes to the punch, with cartoons that reveled in an alternative reality. Or no reality at all.
Take, for instance, a Max Fleischer cartoon from 1928, called ‘Koko’s Earth Control.’ In it the title character, Koko the clown, is strolling down a random road when he runs across a huge lever labeled “Do Not Pull!” Naturally, he pulls the lever. And all hades breaks loose. Attempting to describe the surrealistic montage that follows is futile. You have to see it. And after you see it you still won’t believe you saw it.
There are several more cartoons in a similar vein – apocalyptic and unearthly – mostly from Warner Brothers. They all celebrated a mindset that no sane human would want to comprehend. And they were just the ticket for children growing up during the Great Depression, World War Two, and the descent of the Iron Curtain. Their world no longer made any sense, and so watching animated insanity was a crucial component to accepting and processing the chaos around them in the adult world.
Bob’s Burgers is a cartoon that does not use fantasy or surrealism in its storyline. The Belcher family simply try to keep their hamburger joint open through the quotidian challenges of everyday life. Which is just too close to how most of us live our lives to be entertaining on a high enough level to be considered subversive. And if a cartoon ain’t subversive, it’s just animated propaganda for homogenized milk.
But then, Bob’s Burgers never claimed to be anything like zany. And that’s the real tragedy of any animated production that turns its back on the inherent goofiness of the human condition. La Comedie humaine, the French writer Balzac called it – a world of mix-ups and goofs, of frauds and frailties. The world today is headed towards the Ultimate Algorithm. And algorithms have no sense of humor. Or feeling for grace and tolerance.
Besides. We don’t go to the movies to eat hamburgers. We go to munch on popcorn and swill Coke.
Maybe if they’d made Bob’s Barbeque audiences might have been more receptive. Or, at least, more hungry.
Box Office Numbers
With a production budget of 38 million, a worldwide box office percent is 89% for the production budget, Bob’s Burgers took $31,933,186 domestically and grossed $2,214,920 overseas at the box office.
Bob’s Burgers played to 3425 theaters and took $12,416,819 (38.7 %of total gross) in its opening weekend.
The film played to a total of 3425 theaters domestically and took a domestic share of some 89%.
Having ranked 2nd in its opening weekend, Bob’s Burgers dropped to 3rd in its second weekend – running for a total of 9 weeks.
Bob’s Burgers of the top six countries internationally the main markets were the United Kingdom with a lifetime gross of $1,393,348, Australia, with a lifetime gross of $699,297 , and New Zealand, lifetime gross of $84,460.
