The Oprah effect: Will it help ‘Australia’?

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We all know that Oprah sells books big time. But can a big wet Oprah smooch help a movie too? Christopher Campbell has a great post up on BlogSpout about the possible impact of Oprah’s recent endorsement of ‘Australia,’ Fox’s lavish Baz Luhrmann historical drama that opens next week. Oprah gave ‘Australia’ the full monty, saying ‘it’s the best movie I’ve seen in a long, long, long, long time.’ But how much clout does that kind of blurb carry? Fox isn’t the only studio interested in the answer, since according to my research, Oprah has taped cast-shows for three more holiday films--’The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,’ ‘Marley and Me’ and ‘Seven Pounds.’

Campbell did some back-of-the-envelope math based on Oprah’s previous endorsements. His verdict: The queen bee of TV has a mixed track record. She’s featured the casts from ‘Crash’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ which went on to major successes. But she’s hyped such duds as ‘Alexander’ and ‘Things We Lost in the Fire,’ along with the tiny 2005 release ‘Christmas in the Clouds,’ which she touted in O magazine as her ‘must-see holiday movie.’ Campbell also rates films made from Oprah book selections, which include her endorsements of such underperforming film source material as ‘House of Sand and Fog’ and ‘Love in the Time of Cholera.’

Oprah also gave a big push to 2006’s ‘Dreamgirls.’ One of the film’s marketers recalls the picture getting a hefty bounce, in terms of both tracking and media interest, after Oprah weighed in. The film performed pretty well at the box office, but never managed to squeeze into the Oscar race. Oprah never mentioned the magic word during her ‘Australia’ love fest, prompting EW’s Oscar blogger Dave Karger to say it was ‘peculiar’ that she blessed the film without touting its Oscar chances, as if we were all now obligated to view any good movie through the prism of Oscardom.

Campbell concludes that ‘as for films that Oprah simply promotes and recommends on her show, there is no clear certainty that she can influence either box office or the Oscars.’ Movie marketers are slightly more bullish. They say that in an era where the once formidable clout of film critics has largely disappeared, getting a rave from Oprah is the closest thing to the kind of money review Pauline Kael, Vincent Canby or Siskel & Ebert used to deliver. But even high praise from Oprah is no silver bullet, as it is for a highbrow novel. Books are a very personal commitment--if Oprah speaks, there is a certain kind of reader (largely over-30 females) who listen. Moviegoing is a different, more diffuse experience. Even if Oprah speaks, you still have to persuade someone else--a husband, wife or other family members--to join you in making the trip to the multiplex. Sometimes the visceral power of her endorsement is lost in translation.

‘Australia’ arrives Nov. 26, so we’ll find out soon enough if Oprah’s praise fell on deaf ears or not. A large contingent of the entertainment press is seeing the film later this week, so it won’t be long before we all get to share just how many ‘longs’ we’re willing to put up against Oprah’s ‘best movie in a long, long, long, long time’ claim.