there is another reason why movie tanked:

while reviewers praised the film as sophisticated, viewers who actually saw the movie disagreed.

Many reviewers live in a cocoon and reflexively consider any anti business film to be accurate, layered, sophisticated etc...

On the other hand, many audience members recognized this film to be an inaccurate and sophmoric portrayal of business and law. This led to poor word of mouth.

Nothing to do with Clooney's acting. He is today's Cary Grant. But nowadays, barring a Mr and Mrs Smith scandal, actors can't open a movie based on charisma. They open a movie based on their past films. Meaning an audience will trust an actor who has made many good films in the recent past to make good future choices---and will grant him benefit of the doubt when it comes to seeing new film. But benefit only lasts so long. make a crappy movie, and your goodwill is gone. Witness the careers of Kevin Spacey and Tom Hanks. Audiences went to The Big Kahuna and Cast Away--but stopped going to future projects when those two films stunk.

I totally agree. On top of that, where could one find a business in this country that is more manipulative and greedy and exploitive than "HOLLYWOOD"? Oh, I forgot, hypocrisy. And also, most of us do not spend our lives working in a glass tower; we work down here on the earth and deal with mundane problems; addressing those situations in life we ordinary humans relate to might be a good idea for Hollywood to latch onto. A story has to have something more than Michael Clayton is purporting to offer to entice us "adults" to line up at the box office. We will probably catch the DVD later on.

Hey Oxmont, I don't know what world you live in, but in my world Hollywood has no lock on hypocrosy and greed. Let me guess, you just don't trust that old "Main Stream Media" to tell the truth and you don't trust Hollywood to depict real life.

Those Hollywood types, in their glass towers, just can't see how you and those hardworking stiffs in Big Business really live. Poor, poor pitiful them.

I happened to like "Michael Clayton" because I like movies and I don't expect them to be documentarians all the time. Do you really think Rocky could have survived the beatings he took without being permantly damaged? Nobody ever claimed "Michael Clayton" was real life. Or perhaps you really can't tell the difference.

good reply dante:

similar to the comment many moviegoers make: "i don't go to movies to think, just ot veg out."

also, the original rocky succeeded as a character study and there was a great sense of verisimilitude in the portrayal of a loser in philly. the boxing scenes were too short to mar the movie.

michael clayton tries to appeal to viewers by 'blowing the lid off corruption'---corporate and personal. when the corruption is portrayed so inaccurately it fatally flaws the film.

He sheds them nightly over such box office failures as Road to Perdition ($104 mil), Catch Me If You Can ($164 mil), and Da Vinci Code ($217 mil.) One lousy movie (which somehow managed to gross $233 mil; the word of mouth must have been kind of slow) and he was finished forever, poor fellow.

nice try penis, sorry, penal.

perdition had paul newman and sam mendes post american beauty cachet

catch me was a dicaprio vehicle; hanks was stuck in a thankless javert supporting role

and da vinci was, if i recall, kinda a big success as a novel...penal colony could have starred in it and it would have grossed the same.

why not mention the hanks' 'successes': the ladykillers and the terminal, both squandering directing by hollywood luminaries...