Why no success at the box office?

I remember when it came out. It was an OK performer here in Colombia. And I loved the film. It is a very underrated gem.

Strength and Wisdom are not Opposing Values

For me the problems are the tone being all over the place, unnecessary voiceover and not enough laughs from Chevy

Sometimes films don't do well because they are crap. The word gets out and moviegoers stay away. Now I ran out to see it on opening weekend and was disappointed. I was a big fan of both Chase and Carpenter and had higher expectations for it. I think the bigger problem was Chase doing too many novelty pictures and it just wore out its welcome. Still, if it was a better movie and got better reviews more folks would have seen it.

I watched it for the first time yesterday with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. It went completely under the radar on its theatrical release (at least here in Brazil) and I only knew it was a John Carpenter's film when I saw his name in the opening credits.

It probably suffered from bad marketing, but I think the biggest problem was the casting of Chevy Chase in the leading role. I was expecting a comedy, maybe with some drama and/or romance, but instead I got an action/adventure movie with some humor. I wondered if Kurt Russell wasn't available, because that should be Carpenter's obvious choice for this kind of movie and would tell the audience exactly what to expect.

EDIT: From what I could gather in this forum, it seems that Carpenter was just a hired director and didn't have as much control as in his personal projects. That would explain the (mis)casting.

Because it was crap.

But I think it was also hard to market. Because it was crap because it didn't know what it wanted to be. It was conceived as a comedy. Then they cast Chase, a comedian, and he wanted it to be serious. Reitman quit over it. The result was a film they didn't know how to market. What were they supposed to say, "Come see greath comic actor of the last 15 years in a straight science fiction movie!"

I saw this movie in the theater, and I think even before seeing it, word was out that it was not really a comedy, and that is was kind of pointless.

Plus Chase's star had probably fallen a bit. His Next movie Cops and Roberson's didn't do well either. He was still a big star, but he he couldn't carry a movie on his name alone anymore. Modern Problems was even worse, but it made twice as much a decade earlier, but then Chase Chase was HUGE.