Weve got six movies that serve the leading ladies of the latest comedy about overgrown boys better.
With this weekends Grown Ups 2, once again Salma Hayek, Maya Rudolph, and Maria Bello will be drafted into onscreen service as the wives of Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, and Kevin James. All three of them are in roles that dont begin to approach the capabilities of these actresses. So rather than bum yourselves out contemplating the lack of good roles for women in Hollywood, you could take a pro-active approach and catch these three women in movies that are more worthy the talents of Hayek, Bello, and Rudolph. Six movies that didnt approach half of the box-office take of the Grown Ups movies (the original took in $162 million domestically). And whats more fun than a self-styled film festival? Nothing, thats what. Allow us to plan this one out for you.
Film #1: Savages
Box Office: $47.3 million
Reported Budget: $45 million
Its always good to kick these things off with something thats high on energy, and nothing fits that bill better than Oliver Stones underappreciated carnival of sun-burned drug-war intrigue. Salma Hayek in particular is a scream as the drug-lord widow whose ruthlessness is only barely tempered by her instincts as a mother. Savages was treated like a middling effort by both critics and audiences, but its truly a whole heap of fun, with John Travolta giving his best performance in some years, and Aaron Johnson and Blake Lively getting suuuuper sexy.
Film #2: A Prairie Home Companion
Box Office: $20.3 million
Reported Budget: $10 million
Maya Rudolph isnt in this film, Robert Altmans last, very much, but in her role as a verrrry pregnant stage manager, she gets to wander through any number of scenes and case such brilliant side-eye. It was an early stepping-stone for Rudolph and the chance to work with a master in his final days. More importantly, with and without Rudolph onscreen, the film is an addictive delight, so comfortable in its musical and comedic chops, and featuring great performances from Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Lily Tomlin, and Lindsay Lohan (no, really!).
Film #3: A History of Violence
Box Office: $31.5 million
Reported Budget: $32 million
Try not to get whiplash from the change in tone, but its important to take things into a more serious direction, and David Cronenbergs meditation on the violence of men certainly is that. Bello came within a hairs breadth of an Oscar nomination for her work here as the wife of Viggo Mortensens hitman-in-hiding. Her performance is sexy, smart, and quick on its feet as she moves from suburban normalcy to something closer to a nightmare.
Film #4: Frida
Box Office: $25.8 million
Reported Budget: $12 million
You could use some culture in your film festival, and theres no better showcase for Salma Hayeks talents as a Serious Actress than her performance as Frida Kahlo in this passion project. Enjoy the crossroads of sex, art, and politics that converge in the film, or assess the merits of Hayeks lone Oscar nomination, or just marvel at that unibrow. Either way, youll have a great better sense of Hayek as a performer.
Film #5: Coyote Ugly
Box Office: $60.7 million
Reported Budget: $45 million
Who says that a film festival has to be all serious and no fun? Who says that it has to be all auteurs like Altman and Stone and Cronenberg? You deserve to have some light, silly fun, and Coyote Ugly does that job. What, are you too good for dancing? Singing? Tyra Banks and John Goodman? Bellos performance as the bar owner is flinty and charismatic, even if she never does get up on that bar to dance.
Film #6: Away We Go
Box Office: $9.4 million
Reported Budget: $17 million
Look at that box-office number. Its criminal. Sam Mendess film of a script by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida is episodic and a bit erratic in parts, but its also a film that builds steadily, from one setting to another, until the final 2-3 "segments" land with a significant emotional weight. That weight doesnt exist without the strong throughline of lead performers John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph. By the time they reach the end of their road, staring out onto the water, trying to imagine their wonderful, scary future, its all just so satisfying. Such a great way to end any film festival.
Previously: 10 Movie Robots We Loved Like Humans
--
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Weve got six movies that serve the leading ladies of the latest comedy about overgrown boys better. 
