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Netflix has films that appeal to horror junkies, thrill-seekers, even hopeless romantics, and so many other movie genres. Its wide selection of movies is what makes it one of the most popular streaming services. And if you’re a fan of dance movies, then Netflix has plenty, including their latest film Work It.

Work It stars Sabrina Carpenter, Liza Koshy, Keiynan Lonsdale, and Jordan Fisher. The film follows teen Quinn (Sabrina Carpenter) as she forms a new dance group in order to impress an admissions representative at Duke University. The film takes a similar path as other dance movies: a studious girl spends her entire high school life studying, then she discovers the power of dance. Work It has all the ingredients of a fun dance movie, including the learning how to dance montage.

If you’ve already watched Work It, and are now in desperate need of some more dance movies in your life, then I have a few suggestions.

Save The Last Dance

What It's About: Julia Stiles plays aspiring ballerina Sara, who moves to an inner-city after her mother dies in a car accident. Sara gives up her dancing dreams because of the accident, that is until she meets Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas), who helps her find her love of dancing again.

Why Work It Fans Will Like It: Work It and Save the Last Dance are kindred spirits in that they are both about teen girls who find their rhythm while falling in love. Unlike Quinn, Sara has a dance background, so dancing is already part of her nature, but she also must learn the complicated hip hop dance style.

Stream it on HBO Max here.

Rent It here.

Leap!

What It’s About: Leap! is an animated film featuring voice acting by Elle Fanning, Nat Wolff, and Carly Rae Jepsen. It’s about two orphans who run away to Paris. There, Félicie (Fanning) starts to train to become a ballerina.

Why Work It Fans Will Like It: Leap! is a lighthearted dance film that also revolves around someone who doesn’t have any formal dance training, but gets mentorship from a fallen expert. Félicie and Quinn both train and find their groove and achieve their dance dreams. For Quinn it’s winning the major Work It competition, for Félicie, it’s to perform alongside principal dancers.

Stream it on Netflix here.

Rent it here.

Footloose

What It’s About: Dancing is outlawed in small-town Bomont, Oklahoma, but rebel Ren (Kevin Bacon) refuses to just live a life without dancing and rock music. Footloose’s cast includes Lori Singer, Dianne Wiest, John Lithgow, Chris Penn, and Sarah Jessica Parker. The original film was released in 1984, and a remake was made in 2011.

Why Work It Fans Will Like It: Footloose and Work It highlight the power of dance and its symbolic tie to freedom and passion.The teens in Work It and Footloose discover their true identities through dancing.

Stream it on Hulu here.

Rent it here.

Center Stage

What It’s About: Center Stage follows several young dancers as they try to prove themselves at a prestigious dance academy. It details the personal and professional struggles they undergo to be considered one of the best ballet dancers. Much of Center Stage’s storyline revolves around Jody (Amanda Schull) not quite fitting the dance mold, but having a strong desire to prove herself. Center Stage’s cast includes Zoe Saldana, Peter Gallagher, Ethan Stiefel, Sascha Radetsky, and Susan May Pratt.

Why Work It Fans Will Like It: Work It and Center Stage both include a cast of real professional dancers, as most of the main cast of Work It has experience in dancing as well as acting. Jordan Fisher even won Dancing with the Stars. Both films are also underdog stories told in the dance world.

Stream on IMDBTV here.

Rent it here.

Battle

What It’s About: Battle is a Norwegian drama about Amalie (Lisa Teige), a rich girl who has her life turned upside down when her father loses his entire fortune. Amalie and her father have to move to a rougher area. Amalie still keeps her dance dreams, but ends up practicing in a free dance studio where she meets Mikael (Fabian Svegaard).

Why Work It Fans Will Like It: Battle very much feels like a Norwegian Saved the Last Dance, so it’s all about a girl who is used to structured dancing finding a passion for hip-hop and the cute guy who instructs her. Work It also feels like a younger sibling to Save the Last Dance in how it takes a girl used to structure and discipline and allows her to find the beauty of listening to her heart and the beat.

Stream it on Netflix here.

Dirty Dancing

What It’s About: Dirty Dancing is a romantic movie about a resort dance instructor falling for one of the girls vacationing there. Baby (Jennifer Grey) and Johnny (Patrick Swayze) get to know each other and start to fall in love through dancing, but Baby’s father doesn’t trust Johnny, especially because he comes from a working-class family.

Why Work It Fans Will Like It: Work It plays up how Quinn and Jake (Jordan Fisher)’s attraction grows every time they dance together. Dirty Dancing and Work It demonstrate the seductive nature of dance and how it can create authentic chemistry between people.

Stream it on Hulu here.

Rent it here.

You Got Served

What It’s About: You Got Served is a dramedy about a street dance crew that battles other hip hop dancers. The dance crew has ups and downs before they try to win the big prize at the major dance competition hosted by MTV. You Got Served’s cast mainly consists of B2K band members, including Marques Houston, Omarion Grandberry, J-Boog Houston, Raz-B Thornton, and Lil Fizz Frederic. Steve Harvey also appears in the film as Mr. Rad, the owner of the club where many of the dance battles take place.

Why Work It Fans Will Like It: You Got Served is a bit more serious than Work It but they’re both overall fun dance movies that don’t take themselves too seriously. Each film also has the power of friendship and being there for one another as one of the driving themes.

Stream it on IMDBTV here.

Rent it here.

Dance Academy: The Comeback

What It’s About: Dance Academy was an Australian teen series that aired from 2010 to 2013. In 2017, it had a continuation movie that followed some of the main characters from the series trying to make it in the dance world. The Dance Academy: The Comeback cast includes Xenia Goodwin, Alicia Banit, Jordan Rodrigues, Dena Kaplan, Thomas Lacey, and Keiynan Lonsdale.

Why Work It Fans Will Like It: Work It had a subplot about ambitious dancers trying to prove themselves to get into top-notch dance programs and universities. If Work It only focused on that aspect, then it would probably have a more similar plot to Dance Academy: The Comeback about the journey of young dancers. Both films also share Lonsdale as an actor.

Stream it on Netflix here.

Rent it here.

Fame

What It’s About: Fame follows a group of New York City teens as they attend a performing arts school. It follows the students from freshmen to senior year. The Fame cast includes Gene Anthony Ray, Irene Cara, Debbie Allen, and Lee Curreri.

Why Work It Fans Will Like It: Fame depicts various art forms and shows the obstacles that come with being an artist. It mixes these issues with typical teen problems, like meeting parental standards. Work It dealt with Quinn’s struggle to please her mother, while also feeling the draw towards dance. Fame and Work It share in that they don’t just address the struggles of a career n the arts, but also typical teen everyday difficulties.

Rent it here.

Bring It On

What It’s About: Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) has just become the cheer captain of the cheerleading squad the Toros. The Toros have won multiple national titles, but Torrance learns that they have won most of them by stealing dance moves from the Clovers team. Eliza Dushku, Jesse Bradford, and Gabrielle Union also star. Bring It On later inspired a franchise of sequel films.

Why Work It Fans Will Like It: Bring It On is more of a cheerleading movie than a dance one, but they both deal with characters who have to start from scratch and find their own style of dance to compete on a grand scale level against a much better team.

Rent it here.

Strictly Ballroom

What It’s About: Baz Luhrmann directed and co-wrote Strictly Ballroom, an Australian romantic comedy about Scott (Paul Mercurio), a professional ballroom dancer who loses his partner and must train a newbie, Fran (Tara Morice) to compete in a major championship.

Why Work It Fans Will Like It: If you were charmed by Quinn and Jake’s dance romance, you’ll be even more dazzled by Fran and Scott’s love story. Strictly Ballroom is a quirky dance movie that has a similar tone to Work It in its playful nature, but also passion and excitement for dance.

Rent it here.

Step Up

What It’s About: Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan star in Step Up as Tyler and Nora, two dancers from different backgrounds forced to pair up. Of course, after a combative partnership, they learn to understand each other and work together, and also fall in love. Step Up eventually had five spin-off films (and counting).

Why Work It Fans Will Like It: Step Up and Work It both highlight how dancing can break down barriers and help people form bonds. They show how dance is universal and how the combination of dance styles leads to really fun final dance numbers.

Rent it here.

Billy Elliot

What It’s About: 11-year old Billy Elliot dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer. Billy has to hide that he takes lessons because his father and brother disapprove of his dream. Jamie Bell plays Billy.

Why Work It Fans Will Like It: Billy finds himself not being supported by his father because of how a boy ballet dancer will look to others. Quinn faces some similar parental disapproval from her mother, who believes she should just focus on her school work. Billy Elliot and Work It both end with the parents seeing the error of their ways and learning to support their children’s passions.

Rent it here.

Flashdance

What It’s About: Jennifer Beals plays Alex, a young woman who dreams of becoming a professional dancer.

Why Work It Fans Will Like It: Flashdance and Work It both focus on young women who have no professional dance training, but their determination allows them to try (and succeed) to compete when they go up against more seasoned professionals. Both films are also about taking chances, even when the odds seemed stacked against you.

Rent it here.

Work It is a cheery dance movie that doesn’t take itself seriously, allowing it to hit the right notes and beats. The films on this list have a similar love of dance spirit.

Stream Work It on Netflix.

So your kids have watched Trolls World Tour a million, bajillion times now, and if you hear “Tiny Diamond” one more time you’re going to throw your TV right out the window. Well, I have some good news for you and your TV set then, because there is a lot of other great stuff streaming on sites like Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu right now that your kids are sure to love (and will get them to stop watching the Trolls sequel... at least for a little while).

Now, I’m going to try to avoid the obvious choices like Frozen 2, which I’m sure your kids probably just got done watching before they moved onto Trolls World Tour (if they’re anything like my kids, anyway). And if you’re also looking for some great TV shows for kids on Netflix, I have that covered, too. But if it’s just movies you’re looking for, then this is the list for you.

UglyDolls

Your kids already like strange looking creatures that sing based off of an already existing toy line, so UglyDolls is the next natural progression for them. It’s about a world where dolls are chosen for kids, but the “ugly” dolls get dropped off in a town called Uglyville. The main doll, Moxy (voiced by Kelly Clarkson) desires to be chosen by a child and be accepted. Kelly Clarkson arguably has better pipes than Anna Kendrick, who voices Queen Poppy in Trolls: World Tour, but the songs aren’t nearly as memorable in this movie.

That said, there is a good message in here about how being different is beautiful in its own way, and the plot is actually easier to follow than in Trolls World Tour. Honestly, you probably won’t personally enjoy it as a parent, but your kids will likely love all the colors and songs.

Stream it on Hulu

Abominable

Abominable is not a musical, so you can get that out of the way, but it does involve music: the protagonist, Yi, voiced by Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s, Chloe Bennet, is a violinist – so it has that going for it. It also has a diverse cast, which is refreshing to see.

The story is about a young girl who finds a yeti (or the abominable snowman) on the roof of her apartment, only to learn that the creature just wants to go home to its family. But there’s a rich dude who wants to capture it, and so Yi must go on an adventure with her two friends to bring the creature to Mount Everest. There’s magic involved, and some really beautiful visuals that will captivate your child in much the same way as Trolls World Tour.

Stream it on Hulu

Moana

As I said earlier, I’m not going to do an obvious choice like Frozen 2, but I will talk up Moana all day. And while you’ve likely already seen it, why not watch it again? You might have already forgotten how good it is.

The story concerns a teenager named Moana (voiced by Auli’i Cravalho) who just wants to sail the sea since she feels called to it. Her father, who is the village chief, forbids it. Because of certain circumstances, Moana disobeys her father and finds a demigod named Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson). They go on an adventure together to end a terrible curse. The music is exceptional in this film, and the story never gets old. So, yeah, watch it again. You’re welcome.

Stream it on Disney+

Sherlock Gnomes

Depending on how old your kids are, you probably never saw Gnomio and Juliet, which is the preceding film to Sherlock Gnomes. But you really don’t have to see that movie to understand this film’s plot. It’s about garden ornaments that go missing, and Gnomeo (voiced by James McAvoy) and Juliet (voiced by Emily Blunt) hire Sherlock Gnomes (voiced by Johnny Depp) to find out why.

The film is fine, and the story is zippy enough, but the one aspect that Sherlock Gnomes might have over Trolls World Tour is the music, since many of the songs are from Elton John’s back catalogue. So if you love Elton John (And who doesn’t?), then you’ll at least dig the soundtrack while your kids enjoy the story.

Stream it on Hulu

Leap!

If your kids like big musical numbers, then they also likely enjoy dancing, which makes Leap! a perfect choice for them. It’s about an orphan named Felicie (voiced by Elle Fanning) who desires to be a ballerina and actually gets her wish when she’s mistaken for somebody else and becomes a student at a famous ballet house in Paris. And while there isn’t any singing, there are dance routines set to popular music, so your kids will probably dig that.

Plus, the story takes place in the 1880s, so it can almost be a history lesson (the Statue of Liberty is being constructed toward the end of the movie) if you feel like doing the research.

Stream it on Netflix

Teen Titans Go! To The Movies

One thing I love about the Trolls movies is that they’re often irreverent and silly, with some jokes going right over kids’ heads. And that’s why I think Teen Titans GO! to the Movies might actually be the only movie on this list that you’ll probably like more than your kids. That’s not to say that your kids won’t also find it funny, since it sometimes has a Spongebob quality to it, but some of the jokes and the songs (and they’re such great songs) will probably make you laugh a lot more than your little ones.

Like Lego Batman, the film is self-referential, with the plot even getting kickstarted because the members of the Justice League criticize the Teen Titans since they don’t even have their own movie, which leads them to want to want their very own blockbuster. Please, just watch this movie. You won't regret it.

Stream it on HBO

Tangled

Tangled often gets forgotten since it’s B.F. (Before Frozen), but that shouldn’t hold it back because Tangled is arguably a more interesting film. It’s about Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore), who is trapped in a tower, but then, because of outside circumstances, leaves the tower and goes on an adventure with a handsome thief named Flynn Rider (voiced by Zachary Levi).

Like Moana, the music in Tangled is exceptional, and you and your kids will enjoy all the many twists and turns in the movie. And your kids must like twists and turns since Trolls World Tour is kind of all over the place, amirite?

Stream it on Disney+

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation

The Hotel Transylvania series has always been silly. Taking classic monsters like Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s monster and defanging them has pretty much been its entire conceit. And while there is no singing in these films, the interesting characters are sure to glue fans of Trolls to the screen.

The third movie takes place on a cruise ship as Dracula needs to unwind from his duties, only to learn that the ship is being piloted by the Van Helsing family, which famously hunts monsters. And even though there isn’t any singing in this movie, the end of the flick has a pretty boss techno number, similar to the intro of Trolls World Tour.

Stream it on Netflix

The Secret Life Of Pets 2

Similar to Hotel Transylvania, The Secret Life of Pets series doesn’t use music to tell its stories. But the characters are colorful and memorable, just like the cast of Trolls.

The sequel concerns the Jack Russell Terrier Max (voiced by Patton Oswalt) and his now-buddy Duke (voiced by Eric Stonestreet) going to a farm where they encounter an alpha dog named Rooster (voiced by the always gravely Harrison Ford). But unlike the first movie, the story of this one is disjointed and broken up into two separate stories that converge in the end with Snowball the rabbit (Kevin Hart) and Gidget the Pomeranian (Jenny Slate) having their own adventure. It’s a fun time, and one fans of Trolls will love.

Stream it on Netflix

Trolls Holiday

Ffinally, if your kids just can’t get enough of Trolls, then there’s always the half hour Christmas special, Trolls Holiday. Queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick) wants to bring joy to her best friend, Bridget the Bergen (voiced by Zooey Deschanel), and she plans to do it by introducing the Bergens to their massive amount of troll holidays, since the Bergens don’t have any holidays. Antics ensue.

It’s your typical Troll fare, but your kids will of course love it because… well, Trolls.

Stream it on Netflix

Those are the picks. I also could have included movies like The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part and The Angry Birds Movie 2, but I figured that 10 were enough picks to get your kids to pull themselves away from Troll World Tour. If anything, at least these ten picks can give you a break for a little while.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Andres Muschietti's IT has continued its killer box office tear in its second week, and has been crowned king once again. We have all of the details below in our Top 10 chart, so check it out, and we'll analyze below

While IT faced off against a pair of newcomers in its second weekend, they proved to be no competition for the horror blockbuster. Dropping only 51.4 percent compared to its first go-round, the movie brought in an additional $60 million in the last three days, and shattered a few more records in the process. The big one that's been broken is the all-time September box office record, which is pretty insane when you consider that the film has been out for only a little over two weeks. The record previously belonged to Crocodile Dundee, which made an impressive $174.8 million after it was initially released in September 1986, but a new champion has now been crowned.

And while it didn't happen this weekend, IT will also be hitting another major milestone in the next few days. Now that the feature's total domestic gross stands at $218.7 million, it is on the verge of becoming the highest grossing R-rated horror movie of all time (the current record belongs to William Friedkin's The Exorcist, which made $232.9 million - unadjusted for inflation - back at the end of 1973). This wouldn't quite be enough to establish the Andres Muschietti blockbuster has the highest-grossing domestic title in the genre, as M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, which made $293.5 million in 1999 - but at this rate it would surprise nobody if that winds up being another crown stolen by Pennywise.

Unfortunately, the rest of the box office news isn't so exciting. The performance by Michael Cuesta's American Assassin was thankfully enough to prevent the fourth straight week of only one title making more than $10 million, but it's still hard to get excited for a $14.8 million take. The new action movie was budged at a reported $33 million, and has been eyed as the start of a new thriller franchise, but whether or not that future will play out has a big question mark attached to it now. The film didn't exactly get positive reviews, but the fact that crowds gave it a B+ CinemaScore means that the feature could grow some legs as we move through the rest of the month.

The story couldn't be more different for Darren Aronofsky's mother!, however. The movie got a mixed response from both the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals - but while critics remained mostly positive, it seems that audiences absolutely hate it. Said to be a rather unpleasant experience at the movies, mother! actually managed to earn an 'F' CinemaScore, which is far from a common feat. Ultimately it was able to make $7.5 million this weekend while out in over 2,000 theaters, but one has to wonder how long it will actually stick around in theaters. If this one has your curiosity, you might want to check it out on the big screen sooner rather than later.

With the exception of IT, new releases have left us wanting a lot more in the last few weeks, but the movie world should definitely be getting a big boost on Friday. In addition to the horror feature Friend Request, and the limited release of Battle of the Sexes, studios are providing film fans with a double dose of big titles - including Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman: The Golden Circle (expected to be a nice and profitable sequel to an original that was a big surprise on the business side), and the LEGO Ninjago Movie (which will hopefully break the terrible trend in 2017 animation that the industry has been seeing since the release of LEGO Batman in February). Be sure to come back next week to see how it all shakes out!

Anticipation for director Andres Muschietti's IT has been boiling for weeks now, but in the past three days audiences showed Hollywood just how hungry they were for this new Stephen King adaptation. After making a stunning $51 million on Friday alone, the new blockbuster has shattered multiple records, and has immediately become one of the most successful fall releases of all time. Check out the top 10 below!

It was rather amazing to watch the estimates for IT's opening weekend climb over the last few weeks. First it was between $50-60 million. Then it was $85 million. Then came $95 million. Hell, as of mid-Saturday the professional prognosticators were still saying that the horror feature would probably make around $103 million. Now, however, the final figures are in, and they are stunning. The $117 million take is a stunning achievement by itself, but even more amazing when you consider it has an R-rated horror title between released during the fall season.

In the eyes of box office analysts these are all elements that usually ding opening weekend numbers, but IT obviously shattered both expectations and records. It's the most successful horror opening of all time, and the most successful fall opening of all time - and it would be the most successful R-rated opening of all time had Deadpool not set the bar so high in February 2016 making $132 million during its first three days.

The immense success of IT is not only wonderful because Andres Muschietti has made a legitimately great film, but also because the box office news that we've been getting in the last few weeks has been truly dreadful. August was an extremely hard movie month to get through, and you can see it all on display in the rest of the Top 10 that unfolded above (the rest of the weekend's totals in the Top 10 are equal to only about a quarter of IT's take). The Hitman's Bodyguard, which got rough reviews when it was released in mid-August, finally got dethroned from the number one spot after three weeks, and it has still only managed to make $64 million thus far. Spider-Man: Homecoming - which was released in early July - is somehow still holding on to the seventh spot. It's a great thing for the industry to see so many people excited by a new release, and it gives us renewed hope for how the rest of 2017 will play out.

As you can see, the only other new release this week was the Reese Witherspoon-starring romantic drama Home Again, which got absolutely crushed. You get the sense that the film came out hoping that it would attract movie fans who aren't big into the horror scene, but it seems that it didn't take into account that the competition would be a true-blue all-around crowd pleaser. It should be noted that the $9 million take isn't devastating, as it's hard to imagine the feature carrying a huge price tag, but it's performance certainly does look incredibly underwhelming compared to IT's final tally.

Given the strong buzz that IT has, and then fact that it should continue to be watercooler conversation for the next week, there's a strong chance that the new Stephen King movie will put up impressive second week numbers as well. That being said, it does face some interesting competition in the form of Darren Aronofsky's mother! (another critically-acclaimed horror feature), and the Michael Cuesta-directed action thriller American Assassin. We'll be back next week to analyze the aftermath, so we'll catch you then!

This Labor Day weekend is shaping up to be one for the record books... except, it's not the kind of history the studios want to make. Official stats are still rolling in, but so far as the traditional weekend goes, this will be the lowest-grossing Labor Day box office in 12 years, with only one movie reaching double-digit figures in the millions and other films struggling to pad their totals. Here's the rundown:

A quick glance at this weekend's box office chart suggests that not a lot changed. Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds' The Hitman's Bodyguard held on to the top slot of the Top 10, with the horror hit Annabelle: Creation holding on to its second-place finish. The latter has inched closer to $100 million, making it a true late-summer success and a shot in the arm for the Conjuring Cinematic Universe that James Wan is helping Warner Bros. build.

In third place, also very encouraging, is Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen's Wind River, a tense murder mystery from writer/director Taylor Sheridan. The movie took in $5.8 million domestically in its fifth week, because it has been rolling out into more theaters, building on buzz and capitalizing on the fact that people know Sheridan from his previous films, Sicario and the exquisite Hell or High Water. Wind River currently has $18M in the bank on a reported $11M budget, a tidy win for The Weinstein Company.

Beyond the top three, there wasn't much change, with movies like Logan Lucky, Dunkirk and even Spider-Man: Homecoming holding on to the same slots that they had the week before. Marvel and Sony's Spider-Man movie is doing much better than the Amazing movies in the States, coasting well above $300M at the box office and showing impressive legs. Wonder Woman, meanwhile, pushed its massive cume to $408.9M with and additional $1.9M over the holiday weekend.

There were a few unusual blips at the box office that bear note. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind returned to select theaters and notched $1.8M in 901 locations. Also, the upcoming Marvel television show Inhumans tested its waters on IMAX before being available on ABC, which is a lot more than I expected people to pay for a show that they'll be able to watch for free. And after botching the marketing campaign, Weinstein finally unveiled the steamy romance Tulip Fever, with Alicia Vikander risking her marriage in order to screw Dane DeHaan. But audiences didn't turn up, as the Fever only banked $1.2M in 765 theaters. Not terrible. But not good. Which kinds up sums up this entire box office weekend, in a nutshell.

Patrick Hughes' The Hitman's Bodyguard is one of only a small number of movies in summer 2017 to own the box office for two weekends in a row - but looking at the numbers that Hollywood put up in the last three days, there is nothing to be proud of here. Check out the full rundown in the chart below.

I'm afraid to report that your eyes are definitely not deceiving you here. While it's customary for at least a few movies in the Top 10 to make more than $10 million in one weekend, this weekend saw only one title hit that mark. The result is a historically low box office, the likes of which, according to Box Office Mojo, we have not seen since September 2001. This is what happens when there aren't any new exciting movies arriving in local cinemas.

Rather than being dethroned by either Leap! or Birth of the Dragon, The Hitman's Bodyguard managed to hold on to its number one spot during its second week with a not-great 53 percent drop. That brings it's total domestically to $39.6 million - which at least must be nice for investors, given that the whole thing reportedly cost $30 million to make. Clearly its not a big money maker, but it's also definitely not a flop.

To go back to those new releases, Leap! is at least keeping some consistency during the summer 2017 season, as it's yet another example of a disappointing animated feature this year. Most of the underwhelming titles to date have been sequels, including Cars 3, The Smurfs: The Lost Village, and The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature, but still the new movie fits right in with The Emoji Movie (which you can now see slipping off the Top 10 after dropping three spots in one week). Leap! hardly earned any excitement with reviews - as it stands with a 37% on Rotten Tomatoes with only 41 reviews registered - but apparently it has definitely won over the people who actually went to go see it. According to CinemaScore, audiences actually gave it an "A."

Hanging out with a "B" CinemaScore, Birth of the Dragon also didn't exactly inspire audiences to run out and buy tickets. The kung fu film, which is a fictional biopic of sorts about Bruce Lee, certainly didn't have a very high budget - but it's hard to imagine anyone being super happy with its opening weekend numbers. Even if this was a found footage movie made for pennies, nobody is walking away happy with a $2.5 million take over three days (that's only $1,546 per theater).

Thankfully, the cinematic doldrums of August are coming to an end this week - but I'm sad to report that we have yet another crazy bland weekend of new releases coming up. While we will see the arrival of IT, mother!, and Kingsman: The Golden Circle in coming weeks, this Friday we will see the arrival of the Michael Apted-directed thriller Unlocked, and Justin Chadwick's period drama Tulip Fever. Stop by next Sunday to see how it all shakes out!

Movies based on historical events, or done as period pieces, frequently play fast and loose with actual history. This is something we can usually deal with, but sometimes it just goes too far. Sometimes movies don't so much as bend historical fact to suit their plot as they snap it into several pieces and bury it in the backyard.

Many of these movies are pure fiction, and some are purported to be based on actual events. However, in every case, there is at least one moment which is so blatantly in conflict with historical fact that we're forced to stand up and call bullshit right there in the theater. Here are seven times when our suspension of disbelief was broken by reality. How often does this happen to you?

Shakespeare in Love

Yes, the entire plot of Shakespeare in Love is a fictionalized version of the playwright's actual life. There was no character like the one portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow in the film. We can deal with that. But is it too much to ask to get the order of the plays right? At the end of Shakespeare in Love, the Queen of England commissions a play from William "for Twelfth Night." Since the plot of the play Twelfth Night shares plot elements with the movie we've just seen, we all smile at the connection. The problem is that Shakespeare apparently didn't get the play done in time for the holiday, or the next five for that matter. Nearly a dozen plays, and a several years, separate Twelfth Night from Romeo and Juliet. The queen was probably ticked off.

The Shawshank Redemption

Movie posters of beautiful actresses play an important role in the story of The Shawshank Redemption. The original novella title of Stephen King's story even includes Rita Hayworth's name. However, the most important poster in the movie is the last one, the poster of Raquel Welch in a fur bikini from the movie One Million Years B.C. It's that poster which is on the wall when Andy Dufresne escapes from Shawshank Prison, which, Red tells us in voice over, took place in 1966. The only problem is that One Million Years B.C. didn't come out in the States until 1967. We're sort of movie fans here, so this is important. It's not like the movie couldn't have kept him in prison a few more months. Maybe they released the poster super early?

Pirates of the Caribbean

The exact timeline of the Pirates of the Caribbean films has never been specifically dealt with on screen. However, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is actually given a specific date by the crew of taking place in 1750. As such, the earlier trilogy takes place at some point prior to that. This is a problem because the nation of Singapore is referenced in the first film, and traveled to in the third, and that's impossible, because colonial Singapore wasn't founded, or named that, until 1819. If Jack Sparrow had been there prior to the first movie, he would have simply found himself in one corner of the Empire of Sultan Alauddin Riayat Shah II. Clearly, he's never been there.

Leap!

Leap! is a silly little animated movie that is mostly harmless, and while it will likely be overlooked by audiences, there were a couple of elements in the background which cannot be overlooked. The movie is set in 1884, which is already a problem because, upon our first look at Paris, we see the Eiffel Tower, in mid-construction. This is a project which did not begin until 1887. Later on in the film, some important scenes take place around the still-under-construction Statue of Liberty. Here, the dates work out closely enough, as the statue did not begin its journey to America until 1885, but there's another problem... the statue is green. The Statue of Liberty is made primarily of copper and as such its original color was, well, copper colored. The green came about through oxidization of the copper, which took decades to occur.

Lincoln

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln is a great movie with a stellar performance by Daniel Day-Lewis, regardless of the fact that it's full of factual errors. We can still overlook many of them, because they're not important and everything else about the film is damn good. However, there's a little matter of the 13th Amendment. The passage of the Constitutional Amendment banning slavery within the United States was a fairly important moment in the history of this nation, and as such, it would have been nice to see it represented properly. For some reason, the movie felt -- probably to create tension -- that it was necessary for two Congressmen from Connecticut to vote against the amendment. Except the Congressional record is clear and in actuality, everybody from the state voted in favor. Who exactly did Connecticut piss off?

Pocahontas

Yeah, ok, so bashing an animated Disney movie for its historical inaccuracy is way too easy. Still, there's a reason that most Disney movies aren't actually based on actual events. There are numerous historical problems with Pocahontas, but the one we're going to hit this movie for is one that informs everything else. While there's some question as to whether or not the story of Pocahontas saving the life of John Smith is true at all, if it is true, the woman was all of 11 years old when it happened. It makes everything about the fictional romance with the 27-year-old John Smith that much more bizarre. Maybe, if you have to age up your character by a decade to make your story less creepy, it's a sign that your story is a bad idea.

Pearl Harbor

Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor is, well, terrible. Just about the only historical fact shown in the film is the fact that there was actually an attack by Japan on a Hawaiian Naval base in the 1940s. However, there's one specific element in this movie that needs to be addressed because not only is it inaccurate, it's ridiculous. In one scene Jon Voight, playing President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an attempt to explain to his generals just how serious he is about attacking Japan, gets out of his wheelchair and stands up. FDR was paralyzed, he didn't have a sprained ankle. The attempt at this amazingly dramatic moment just falls flat for anybody who has a basic understanding of the facts.

We've seen quite an interesting bunch of animated films hit theaters over the course of 2017, and if I were to rank where Leap! comes in on the scale of good to bad, it would be hard to even know where to place it. It's certainly not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not an offensively horrible one either. At best, Leap! is a lazy but good natured attempt to inspire children to follow their dreams, and work hard. At worst, it's a film that doesn't even earn the punctuation it forces upon its audience.

Felicie (Elle Fanning) wants to be a dancer, Victor (Nat Wolff) wants to be an inventor, and Paris is the place to be for these two dreaming orphans. After a daring escape, both of these wide-eyed children find themselves in the City of Lights, chasing their dreams. For Felicie, that means masquerading as someone she's not, in order to make it big in a dance program for only the finest ballerinas. If she makes it, she'll have landed a part in Swan Lake. If not, then her deception may be unmasked, leading to trouble beyond anything she's encountered.

Leap! isn't the worst or most crass animated film you'll see this year, as that honor has already been taken by movies that have come before it. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean much for this movie, as it's still a total mess. The story manages to throw in the kitchen sink when it comes to plot, but doesn't bother to connect the dots in any decent fashion. One moment, young Felicie is escaping with her friend Victor to Paris, and the next she ditches him, turning him into a character that only ever shows up when the plot feels it can use him for dramatic effect. If the story had just dropped him entirely, it might have been a bit more stable, thus creating a character we can properly follow. But Leap! Is trying to cover all the bases, acting as a jack of all story threads while mastering none.

As if that wasn't bad enough, there's a rivalry between Felicie and a rival dancer (Maddie Ziegler) that only rears its head to manufacture a rather contrived third act dance battle. Their adversarial games are just barely set up in the first act, only to reappear and culminate in a showdown set to Demi Lovato's "Confident". If the film hadn't managed to stumble into a truly stunning moment of a ballerina dancing to "Swan Lake", this could have possibly been explained away as a moment for the kids. Instead, it only serve to fuel the dissonance that rules Leap! at every twist and turn.

Had Leap! actually applied itself, there could have been a decent, if not well worn, story that could have been told. It makes it even more of a shame that this film wastes the talents of Mel Brooks and Kate McKinnon, who both polish brief moments of this film's turdiness to the point of laughs. Not to mention, it also miscasts the character of Odette, the tragic and broken mentor to Felicie in her dancing quest, with the poppy voice of singing sensation Carly Rae Jepsen. This isn't really a knock on Jepsen herself, as she's game for the role of the grizzled dance vet. But to really sell this character, they should have tweaked the casting just a little bit.

Somehow Leap! manages to be a film that's unique in the subject matter it chooses to tell its story with, but at the same time it's extremely pedestrian in its execution. If your kids are obsessed with dance enough that they can ignore the thin quality of this film, then they just might enjoy Leap! As for parents, or even animation enthusiasts, you're probably going to wonder why they even bothered to put an exclamation point on a dance film that's so lame, its steps pale in comparison to that of a fire escape. The movies title says it all, as it begs you to just take it at face value, without any further thought into the matter. But this is a leap that's just too far to land.

The fall is so close that we can practically feel the cool breezes and see the leaves shaking in anticipation of changing - but before we get there we still have another late summer weekend to slog through. There are only two movies hitting the big screen in wide release this week, as the season really starts to slam on the breaks entertainment-wise. Get ready for Birth of the Dragon and Leap. It's gonna be a Rotten Week!

Just remember, I'm not reviewing these movies, but rather predicting where they'll end up on the Tomatometer. Let's take a look at This Rotten Week has to offer.

I feel like it's been quite a while since we've had a good old fashioned martial arts flick. And after seeing the trailer for Birth of the Dragon, however, it seems we still have some time to wait. The film is a biopic about Bruce Lee's rise in San Francisco as both a martial arts master/teacher and burgeoning Hollywood star. It also looks deathly boring, and nothing like what you'd hope this story would look like on the big screen.

George Nolfi directs in his first time behind the lens since The Adjustment Bureau (72%). I think Birth of the Dragon will fall well short of that one critically. It's coming out at a bad time (end of the summer) for any flick hoping for any real acclaim, and the marketing materials make it look equal parts over-staged and underwhelming. There's likely a great Bruce Lee biopic to be made, but it doesn't look like this is it.

Ah, for halcyon days of yore when we could dream of being simple things in the world like a ballerina or run-of-the-mill inventor. Such was the status quo in 19th century France, when anything was possible for an orphan - at least according to the new animated feature Leap. And I'm willing to give the flick the benefit of the doubt, as it looks to have all the hallmarks of a feel good animated flick without ever feeling like there are any real stakes.

Leap is the English-language version of Ballerina, a French animated film that came out about a year ago overseas. Feelings at the time were solid, as it currently sits at 76% with more than thirty reviews filed. I suspect this one sticks in about the same range, with the story being too vanilla to harbor any true ill-will, but the film not carrying enough gravitas to hit the upper echelon of the Tomatometer.

It was a fantastic week for the Rotten Watch last time around, with one win and one dead-on-the-money prediction - which doesn't happen all that often (to my overall dismay). The Hitman's Bodyguard (Predicted: 39% Actual: 39%) was a bullseye, finishing as just the kind of underwhelming buddy cop, overly crude film it looked like on paper. I'm as a big a Ryan Reynold's fan as anyone, and Sam Jackson can yell "Motherfucker" all day long and I'd probably be on board. And yet this thing just looked like a slog. Critics agreed.

Meanwhile, while it underperformed at the box office, Logan Lucky (Predicted: 97% Actual: 93%) enters the not-short list of great Steven Soderbergh films. He's already worked to establish himself as the king of the ensemble heist film already, and just added to his resume with this finish. The movie scene is just better with this guy around bringing his A-game. It's just a shame more butts weren't in the theater seats.

Next time around we've got a small week with just Tulip Fever going into wide release. It's gonna be a Rotten Week!