This weekend, there was a great showdown between two comedies. And much like Thunderdome, two men enter, one man leave. Let's go to the numbers, shall we? (All in millions, remember, and these are the studio estimates. The actuals will be available on Monday).
1. Get Smart (WB) - $39.1, 3911 screens, week 1, $39.1 total
2. Kung Fu Panda (Par/DW) - $21.7, 4053 screens, week 3, $155.5 total
3. The Incredible Hulk (Uni) - $21.5, 3508 screens, week 2, $96.4 total
4. The Love Guru (Par)- $14.0, 3012 screens, week 1, $14.0 total
5. The Happening (Fox) - $10.0, 2986 screens, week 2, $50.2 total
6. Indiana Jones... (Par) - $8.4, 3171 screens, week 5, $290.8 total
7. You Don't Mess With The Zohan (Sony) - $7.2, 3278 screens, week 3, $84.0 total
8. Sex and the City (NL)- $6.4, 2442 screens, week 4, $132.3 total
9. Iron Man (Par) - $4.0, 1912 screens, week 8, $304.7 total
10. The Strangers (Rogue) - $1.9, 1578 screens, week 4, $49.5 total
So those are the numbers, but what do they mean? Well, in the showdown between comedies, Get Smart takes the cake over The Love Guru. It's kind of strange, really (possibly ironic in the Alanis sense of the word), that Mike Myers, a man known for comedy through the 90s, falters miserably with a new character of his creating (even though he apparently recycles all his old jokes), while Steve Carell, one of the faces of comedy in this millennium, overtakes the weekend, but he appears in a movie that's a remake of a TV show from the 1960s. Noble Prize winning books have been less complex than that. (Well, some). But yeah, that's pretty bad for Love Guru, but at least we're now spared the sequels.
The Kung Fu Panda and The Incredible Hulk are duking it out for second place. My money is on the panda. animated movies usually take in more on the weekends, plus with schools letting out... you know what? I'm boring myself with this paragraph. Oh, but the Incredible Hulk is performing pretty much the same as Ang Lee's Hulk, but this Incredible Hulk has the distinction of a lower percentage drop between first and second weekend. (Though not by much).
Oh, Iron Man became the first movie this year to reach $300 million. Whoopee!
The Happening... has anyone seen this movie? It's pretty amazing. And not in a good way. Much like my other favorite film of the year, 10,000 B.C., The Happening is an unbelievably entertaining moviegoing experience. Not because it's scary or suspenseful or full of insight, but because it's utterly hilarious. And that's not intentional, which makes the movie that much more special. And yet, I still think it's better than The Village.
Below the radar, Brick Lane, an adaptation of a book that's received a lot of acclaim in written and cinematic form, opened up on 7 screens and took in $50,500. Impressive. Kit Kittridge, an All American Girl, another attempt to turn a doll into a movie, opened up on 5 screens and took in $223,000, which gives it the highest per screen average of the week.
There was also a movie that opened up called Baghead. This amuses me because back in high school english class, we had to perform monologues in front of the class. My friend Brian did not prepare for it, and came into class with a shopping bag over his head, performing a monologue from the play "Baghead Johnson" where he lamented the fact that he has a bag for a head. It was hilarious, so he naturally got an F for the project, but a solid B+ in my book for effort. I doubt the Baghead movie bears any similarities, but it made me smile.
There you have my amazing break down. Next week, Wall-E! And Wanted! And only a few more weeks until The Dark Knight!
Until next weekend....
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