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" Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck made a terrible movie. It&amp;#039;s called Runner Runner and it only made $7.6 million in its opening this past weekend. I haven&amp;#039;t seen Runner Runner, so how do I know it&amp;#039;s terrible? Sometimes the trailer&amp;#039;s enough. But Timberlake and Affleck have no reason to be worried about their bomb. At Variety, Ramin Setoodeh writes that this is a sign Timberlake the mega-pop star should take a break from Hollywood. But of all the reasons Runner Runner may have failed, Timberlake seems the least likely. First of all, the movie was barely promoted, either by the studio or the actors, a sign no one was happy with the result. And the basic concept stinks of the cynicism that makes for bad but not-terrible-enough-to-love Hollywood product: buzzy actors, tropical setting, faintly familiar thriller plot, crocodiles. Didn&amp;#039;t Bond do all of this in 1989? The problem isn&amp;#039;t Justin Timberlake but our expectations for Justin Timberlake. We all tend to treat people who got famous for one talent as if they should do exactly what we tell them to: Scarlett Johansson shouldn&amp;#039;t sing. The Rock can&amp;#039;t be a movie star because he was in WWE. Michael Jordan is only good at basketball. It&amp;#039;s only when stars surprise us in a good way that we let them off the hook. No one would&amp;#039;ve told Ben Affleck to embark on a serious directing career before Argo. Now all anyone talks about is what a bad Batman he&amp;#039;ll be. The truth is sticking to &amp;quot;what you&amp;#039;re good at&amp;quot; is the fastest way to career suicide. If Timberlake had only continued making smooth R&amp;amp;amp;B music, we would&amp;#039;ve gotten bored. He may never be a certified &amp;quot;movie star,&amp;quot; as Setoodeh says, but then again, who are the early-30-something &amp;quot;stars&amp;quot; today if not Timberlake? Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whose Don Jon isn&amp;#039;t doing so hot, either, and with much better reviews than Runner Runner? Madonna has the best, and unsurprisingly, most flippant quote about this problem. Let it serve as advice for Justin Timberlake: &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a certain resentment when people do one thing well and then try to do something else. And everybody gets a bug up their ass. But that&amp;#039;s their fking problem and the fact of the matter is that it really wasn&amp;#039;t such a big leap because I&amp;#039;m a storyteller.&amp;quot; Forget what everyone says, Justin. You can act. Choose better movies to act in. If anyone says you&amp;#039;re no good, well, that&amp;#039;s their fking problem. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a25069/justin-timberlake-runner-runner/>