Times Square Elmo moving to warmer climate. (Getty)

We're not going to lie: those costumed characters in Times Square give us the creeps. We would rather work from home than have another eerie run-in with Hello Kitty or Buzz Lightyear. (And that guy dressed as the Joker? We are literally terrified of that guy.)

To make matters worse, there has been a string of high-profile "incidents" this year relating to the furries and comic book characters roaming the streets. And now Elmo, or the man who impersonates him on the streets, has had enough.

Adam Sandler (not the comedian) has decided to quit his gig as the Sesame Street character and move to Hawaii to try to revive his career there. He told the Post this morning that he was sick of being confused for Damon Torres, a man dressed as Mario who is charged with grabbing a woman in Times Square.

But why would anyone confuse Elmo for Mario? Well, on the Internet, no one can tell which made-up creature you are:

“I saw my name came up in relation to [the alleged Mario grope], but my situation was different,” said Sandler, who is no relation to the movie star. “They’re rehashing me because there are some big problems with the cartoon characters.”

Of course, Mr. Sandler himself doesn't have clean paws: he was arrested for disorderly conduct when he went on an anti-Semitic rant in September. Mr. Sandler, who is Jewish, was screaming "I hate Jews!" when the cops dragged him away.

But that's not why he's moving. Besides the Mario connection, Mr. Sandler claims that passersby have been verbally harassing him for the actions of Kevin Clash, the voice of Elmo on Sesame Street who quit earlier this year under allegations of statutory rape by four men.

"I had people yelling slurs at me, calling me a pedophile, saying I couldn’t be trusted around children,” he said. He plans to play Elmo in Hawaii, which is certainly going to make him sweat. (Also, Elmo in Hawaii?) Mr. Sandler is also considering a change of costume to Woody from Toy Story.

“I could wear high-end fashion jeans with the Woody mask,” he said. “If I get any other costume, I’ll do that. Right now I’m sticking with Elmo.”

Who knew there was such a caste system within the rank and file?

The truly bizarre part of this story, however, is that all these men and women dressing up as characters in exchange for cash are not affiliated with any one business or venture. They are, essentially, free agents. The Times Square Alliance is consulting with both the NYPD and the rights holders to see what regulatory actions can be taken against these "aggressive solicitations."

As far as we know, these various Disney, comic book and video game icons are not licensed, and are not official reps for the movies or labels they impersonate figures from. Which of course makes us wonder: A) Where did they get the costumes? B) Who is in charge of making sure that there aren't duplicates (e.g., two Minnie Mice) in the area? and C) IS there really a sex tape of Minnie and and Goofy doing the un-Disney deed in a bathroom of Bubba Gump Shrimp? Talk about childhood trauma for any unfortunate tourist kid who happened to walk in and see that.

Meaning that when you pay Mickey for that picture, just remember ... there's absolutely no difference between him and the guy on the opposite end of the street panhandling.

Andy Samberg follows in Adam Sandler's footsteps

Well, we can't say we didn't see this coming. Right on the heels of Kristin Wiig, Lonely Island's Andy Samberg announced on Friday to The New York Times that was he was leaving Saturday Night Live. Not that he hadn't already hinted that in his last Digital Short.

Oddly, he had told E! two days prior that he probably wasn't going to leave:

"Nothing's decided yet," Samberg told E! News Wednesday, adding it would "definitely be weird" not being on the show.

But when he talked to the NYT, he was all:

"Obviously it's not a huge shock, but I did officially decide not to come back."

This month he'll join another SNL alum, Adam Sandler, in That's My Boy. Already, Mr. Sandler has some high praise for his costar:

"He's doing it all right," Sandler said. "This guy cares about being a good person first, and I love that about him. He's a hard-working fool when he wants to be, and he's really a smart, talented and great guy. I know he's going to do everything he wants to do.

"I was aggressive back in the day," he continued. "I was driven and needed to get my movies made and blah blah blah. He's less nutty about it. He's a very passionate and smart guy who knows about what should come first, and that's life. Right? Something like that?"

1. Just Go With It: $31 million (new)

That this film ended up in the top spot is likely a consequence of theater count--its per-theater average was less than Never Say Never's and just slightly over Gnomeo and Juliet's. That said, Sandler and Aniston are a surer bet for exhibitors, and the film played in far more theaters than either of the other films. (All three films had very high averages and total grosses compared to last weekend's Super Bowl-depressed totals.) The film grossed about $10 million less its opening weekend than Sandler's last outing, Grown Ups, but the lack of springtime competition bodes well for Just Go With It's long-term prospects. It's also Aniston's biggest opening since The Break-Up in 2006--both stars can still pull out a hit, it seems! (Guess the heavy promotion worked.)

2. Justin Bieber: Never Say Never: $30.3 million (new)

Bieber had a weekend of narrow misses--his fans can make voodoo dolls of Esperanza Spalding and the 443 theater owners who played Just Go With It but not Never Say Never. The film had a glorious $9,746 average, but concert films tend to open with big per-screen numbers then drop like stones at the box office: just ask the Jonas Brothers. In fact, Justin, you might want to ask their advice about a few things--you know, just in case.

3. Gnomeo and Juliet: $25.5 million (new)

These numbers are strikingly high for what seemed like a throwaway kids' movie--but there's little else out there for the audience too young for Bieber. The numbers shouldn't sag too much over the long Presidents' Day weekend, though this won't make the Toy Story producers lose any sleep.

4. The Eagle: $8.6 million (new)

It's a big jump from the top three film's numbers down to The Eagle's. Did you see The Eagle? Did anyone you know see The Eagle? Without big stars or game-changing action, historical drama will always be a tough sell (c.f. Kingdom of Heaven, Tristan and Isolde). It'll find an audience once it's left theaters, we expect, but not because of history buffs.

5. The Roommate: $8.4 million ($26.1 million total, second week)

The Roommate could have stumbled even worse--it has at least a little staying power, considering the number of new releases and that its business didn't drop by more than half. Leighton Meester isn't a box office draw yet--in about two weeks, this movie will have faded away entirely--but nor did she embarrass herself badly. Well, at leat not commercially. Artistically, on the other hand... anyway, outside the top five, The King's Speech is nearing $100 million!

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Knight & Day

What's the story: We know Hollywood loves remakes, but was it really necessary to take another swing at Killers so soon after its failure at the box office? For those who haven't put on a television, turned on a computer or read a newspaper in the last month, Knight & Day finds Tom Cruise — and his toothy grin — starring as Ray Miller, a rogue C.I.A. agent who becomes infatuated with civilian named June Havens (Cameron Diaz, also heavily featuring her best Colgate smile) while trying to avoid explosions. There are double crosses — hey, Peter Sarsgaard, we hope Knight & Day bought you and Maggie Gyllenhaal the finest organic groceries Park Slope has to offer — and preposterous stunts, but in the end, this is The Tom Cruise Show. And based on the initial box office — Knight & Day opened on Wednesday to just $3.8 million, the lowest opening day for a major film starring Tom Cruise since Far and Away — audiences have long since changed the channel. Critics have too — though our Sara Vilkomerson found Knight & Day to be "straight-up fun, hiding nothing about its intentions" — but for the sake of Twentieth Century Fox's marketing department, maybe go buy a ticket to see Knight & Day. After all the work they put in, they deserve your help.

Who should see it: Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

Grown Ups

What's the story: Another week, another worst movie of the summer. This time around, it's Grown Ups that gets to take a turn in the barrel. Basically a Happy Madison version of The Big Chill, Adam Sandler's latest just seems like an excuse for the mumbling superstar to hang out with his friends — Rob Schneider, David Spade, Chris Rock, Kevin James, and director Dennis Dugan. The reviews have been toxic — with some going as far to say that this is the worst movie of Sandler's career. And this is the guy who made Waterboy. And Little Nicky. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

Who should see it: Lorne Michaels.

Also opening this weekend: Wait, there's a good movie coming out today too? Stop the presses! Restrepo — about Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington being embedded with a platoon of Marines in Afghanistan — won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for documentaries, and will probably be more worth your time than seeing Grown Ups. Just guessing.

We found ourselves plenty surprised by Judd Apatow’s Funny People. Apologies to our own Rex Reed—whose vitriol over the film was epic in its proportions—but it wasn’t nearly as bad as we had anticipated. Quite the opposite, in fact: We sneaky loved it! Funny People was vicious, biting, messy and altogether human. And that prohibitive and much debated length wasn’t all that prohibitive at all. (Though, truth be told, Mr. Apatow could have saved about 10 minutes if he had excised the unnecessary and distracting celebrity cameos—James Taylor and Eminem have as much range as Mr. Apatow's pre-teen daughters.) That being said, for us, the biggest shocker of all was how Eric Bana stole the movie from his, ostensibly, funnier co-stars.

Anyone who has read Mr. Bana’s IMDb mini-biography knows that the square-jawed Australian actor made a name in his native land by being a comedian. He even had his very own series, The Eric Bana Show Live, and was famous for doing—gasp!—celebrity impressions. Here in America, however, Mr. Bana has been asked to almost exclusively play earnest and serious leading men in films like Troy, Hulk, Munich and the upcoming adaptation of The Time Traveler’s Wife. Even in this May’s bubblegum science fiction smash, Star Trek—hey, remember when that was the movie of the summer?—he barely got to do anything other than snarl as the Romulan villain; Kahn, he was certainly not.

It’s all different in Funny People, though, where Mr. Bana is simply a revelation. That he doesn’t show up until nearly 90 minutes into the film is, in hindsight, one of our biggest complaints with the finished product. As Clarke, the disenchanted and disingenuous husband to Leslie Mann’s Laura, Mr. Bana basically murders in every scene he appears and winds up blowing both Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler off the screen in terms of bringing the funny. Acting in his native accent, a rarity here for Mr. Bana, he’s sharp, quick, unpredictable and, ultimately, quite sympathetic in his own misguided way. (The secret about Funny People is that it’s filled with some of the most unsympathetic characters we’ve seen in a major release in quite some time; we think this is a good thing.)

Because the final box office tally for Funny People might wind up on the short side of tepid, we’re not quite sure Mr. Apatow’s ultimately ambitious film will break through in the Oscar race. (Don’t fool yourself: For major releases, box office matters to the Academy.) But, all things being equal, Mr. Bana should get serious Oscar consideration for a Best Supporting Actor nomination come next January. As it turns out, he’s the funniest person in Funny People.

Perhaps Judd Apatow is smirking all the way to the bank. Funny People, the hirsute director’s third film, opened in the No. 1 position at the box office this weekend, scoring an estimated $23.4 million in ticket sales. Unfortunately, that makes Funny People the lowest-grossing film to reach No. 1 this summer, an honor we’re not quite sure everyone at Universal was hoping for back when the season started. As we do each Monday, here’s a breakdown of the top five at the box office.

1. Funny People: $23.4 million ($23.4 million total)

Like the marketing campaign, which could never find footing between the comedy and drama that Funny People employs fairly equally throughout its two-and-a-half-hour running time, we’re not entirely sure what to make of this opening gross. For an Adam Sandler movie, it’s on the low end—not counting Reign Over Me, which opened on just under 1,700 screens, this is his worst opening since Spanglish started with $8.8 million in 2004. For Mr. Apatow, Funny People checks in well below the $30.7 million that Knocked Up pulled down two summers ago, but slightly ahead of The 40-Year-Old Virgin (though not in tickets sold). You’ll read today how this is yet another disappointment for Universal, but since Funny People is an R-rated dramedy with a prohibitive length, we’re not quite sure what everyone expected; it was never going to be The Hangover. As usual, word of mouth will be the deciding factor in how this does moving forward.

2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $17.7 million ($255.4 million total)

As The Half-Blood Prince steamrolls towards $300 million at the domestic box office, it’s a good time to look at how things are going internationally. Globally the boy wizard has accrued an astonishing $747.8 million, making it the second biggest hit of the year, behind only Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The moral of the story: Buy Warner Brothers stock!

3. G-Force: $17 million ($66.4 million total)

Dipping a reasonable 46 percent in weekend two, G-Force held its own, finishing just behind Harry Potter, and now seems poised to crack $100 million at the box office this summer. If we would have told you in early July that G-Force would handily out-gross Brüno, we don’t necessarily think you would have believed us.

4. The Ugly Truth: $13 million ($54.4 million total)

Everyone might hate Katherine Heigl, but they certainly keep going to see her movies. The Ugly Truth dropped a to-be-expected 53 percent and managed to up its cume to over $50 million, putting it well on course for nearly $80 million in ticket receipts. With a budget under $38 million and an R-rating, we can’t imagine anyone at Sony being upset with this performance.

5. Aliens in the Attic: $7.8 million ($7.8 million total)

Aliens in the Attic edged out the second weekend of Orphan ($7.2 million/$26.7 million total) to finish in fifth place. If you ever found yourself wondering what a movie dumped on 3,106 screens would look like, you now have an answer.

We sure hope you had a good summer at the movies: With Aug. 1 falling on Saturday, we’re looking at five whole weeks of middling-to-crappy Hollywood genre fare that wasn’t strong enough to open during the big-boy months of May, June and July. As we do every Friday, here’s a handy guide to the new releases.

Funny People

What’s the story: Pretentiously promoted as “the third film from the director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up,” Funny People finds Adam Sandler playing Adam Sandler—err, George Simmons—a wildly successful comedian and star of such things as Merman (think: Waterboy with gills), who finds out he’s dying of a rare blood disease. Faced with his own mortality, he makes a friend in an up-and-coming comedy protégé (Seth Rogen) and rekindles a relationship with “the one who got away” (Leslie Mann), until—surprise!—his disease starts to get better. The meditation on love, life, death and dick jokes sounds very James L. Brooks–ian to us, which begs the question: Is Funny People Judd Apatow’s Terms of Endearment or Spanglish? Based on the mixed-to-poor reviews, we’re unfortunately thinking it’s more of the latter. In his hilarious evisceration, our own Rex Reed calls Funny People a “146-minute mental lapse that should have been dipped in hydrochloric acid in the editing room,” and highlights the script as “amusing as infanticide.” We're guessing someone just got taken off the Apatow Family Christmas card list.

Who should see it: Garry Shandling.

Aliens in the Attic

What’s the story: As if you couldn’t tell from the title: While on a family vacation, a bunch of precocious kids find aliens—wait for it—in the attic. Aliens in the Attic is being billed as coming from one of the writers behind Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, a bit of information ostensibly intended to make you want to run out and see it. That’s all well and good, but even if we were in the target demographic for this film, we don’t think we could get past the computer-animated aliens. If you thought we’ve come a long way since Who Framed Roger Rabbit, you were wrong.

Who should see it: Judge Doom.

Adam

What’s the story: Bittersweet and charming are two words you’ll see associated with Adam aplenty throughout the rest of the summer. The Fox Searchlight indie, from director Max Mayer (episodes of West Wing and Alias), stars handsome British actor Hugh Dancy as Adam, a young man suffering from Asperger’s syndrome. Of course things get complicated when he falls in love with the neighbor next door (the beguilingly beautiful Rose Byrne). The reviews for Adam have been universally strong, specifically singling out Mr. Dancy as a revelation. If you don’t think this could be a dark horse Oscar contender, we have five words for you: Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump.

Who should see it: Forrest Gump.

And! For some indie-fun, check out: Fragments (with Dakota Fanning) and the dolphin documentary, The Cove.

I'd like to tell you how vile this deviation from sanity called Funny People really is, but it is one of those rare times when I am at a loss for words. Judd Apatow, the most tasteless no-talent and truthfully alleged “director” since John Waters and the Farrelly brothers, follows the abominable Knocked Up with a 146-minute mental lapse that should have been dipped in hydrochloric acid in the editing lab.

Chief among the myriad problems infecting this junk heap is that the funny people in the title are simply not funny. Of course, it doesn’t help if you are allergic to Adam Sandler and an aberration called Seth Rogen in the first place. This grim duo is about as funny as two kidney stones. The plot—about a stand-up comic dying of a terminal blood disease—can be written on the head of a pin. The script is as amusing as infanticide, and two and a half hours of any single aspect of it is a torture that is unacceptable even by hopeless 21st-century standards. Mr. Sandler, who by contract should be legally prevented from ever appearing in a bathing suit, is George Simmons, a comedian famous for playing a mermaid and who has been on the cover of Rolling Stone. Mr. Rogen is Ira Wright, a wannabe disaster with a filing cabinet full of jokes about toilet activities and oral intercourse who gets selected to be his protégé. They meet cute in the comedy club’s parking lot. In no time, the green novice is running errands for the seasoned jokester and providing one-liners about diarrhea, masturbation, flatulence, fellatio and talking genitals, to the horror of his jealous roommate (Jason Schwartzman). For anyone with an I.Q. above 40, there is no relief in sight. If there is anyone more repulsive than Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen, it is Jason Schwartzman, who also provided a musical score that makes construction-site jackhammers sound like Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.” Between batteries of blood tests and treatments, we get routines guaranteed to bore a kindergarten at recess. There is even a scene in which everybody takes turns rubbing peanut butter on their face and the dog licks it off. Talk about wasting time to drag out a movie by covering up the fact that there is no movie!

In every film, Mr. Sandler looks more retarded, but never mind. Just when the movie threatens to make a point about the death of comedy or the hypocrisy of the Hollywood laugh machine, his fatal, inoperable (and somewhat mysterious) disease goes into remission and George tries to get his ex-girlfriend back. Enter Leslie Mann, Mr. Apatow’s spouse, who has appeared in both of the director’s other moronic films, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up—a terrible actress who speaks through her sinus cavities and sounds like she has a speech impediment. For no logical reason, George and Ira pack off for hundreds of miles to the house in Marin County where Laura lives with her obnoxious children and her dopey Australian Muscle McGurk husband, played by Australian Muscle McGurk actor Eric Bana, who has seen better roles (and films) elsewhere. When he comes home and discovers they’ve rekindled their flirtation, a slugfest breaks out and … oh, what the F! This movie has been going nowhere, and it’s about to start now? There is nothing cute or cool or liberating about almost two and a half hours of X-rated excreta by criminally unfunny people feigning to be pros. Funny People seems to have been written with crayolas and directed on a cell phone. There’s probably a reason why the two meatheads are called George and Ira, but the irony is insulting.

This is a waste of two and a half hours of my life that I will never get back again. If you object to public offenses of decency, smut that reduces the oxygen in the brain or just plain lousy, amateurish filmmaking, it’s easy enough to avoid Funny People like the swine flu. Unfortunately, if you’re a movie critic, the luxury of self-protection is not an option.

rreed@observer.com

Here’s a question for the advertising executives out there: Why is Universal doing such a lame job marketing a major summer movie like Funny People? We’re now a few weeks shy of the July 31 release date for Judd Apatow’s latest would-be blockbuster (or as the smug posters say, “The third film from the writer/director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up”), and, to us, it seems like the buzz on this thing is nonexistent. If opening weekends are based solely on marketing, expect Funny People to find numbers that rival Year One.

The problem starts with oversaturation. The first trailer premiered online all the way back in February and has been shown in front of movies all summer long. And while it paints Funny People as both touching (see: the Postal Service music cue) and nostalgic (see: the Ringo Starr music cue), it’s actually not that great of a trailer: The issue of giving away key plot twists notwithstanding, the ubiquitous Funny People spot just kind of sits there.

We assumed there would be other trailers, ones cut to highlight more of the humor. But, alas, that hasn’t happened. While Knocked Up, Superbad, Pineapple Express and, most recently, The Hangover, all had hilarious R-rated trailers released onto the Internet well in advance of their release, Funny People has been left with a handful of television spots that aren’t especially funny, but are possibly green-screened. (As one of our friends said, it looks like the movie was shot in 3-D; check out that scene in the kitchen.) The just released Red Band trailer (talk about arriving late to the game) isn’t much better: Most of the jokes there are just an extension on what has already been shown in the original trailer. For a film that reportedly runs over two and a half hours, there has to be more nuggets of comic gold then what’s presented here, no? We simply refuse to believe that Mr. Apatow, Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Jason Schwartzman, Jonah Hill and Leslie Mann can only produce three minutes' worth of light chuckles and knowing smirks.

Look, we understand that Funny People isn’t the same slam-dunk sell as The Hangover or even Knocked Up—two films that, incidentally, had plenty of screenings prior to their release to help build buzz online; we’re still waiting for that to happen with Funny People. This film is going for a different audience—one more mature, more adult. (Think: James L. Brooks.) But just because Funny People isn’t for the frat boys doesn’t mean it can’t be presented as, y’know, really funny. We’ll still be there on opening day, but our presence will have nothing to do with this ad campaign. For Judd Apatow’s sake, we hope we’re not alone.