SUPERGOOD! I knew--if you didn't--that Superbad was going to do tremendously well. It reached #1 making a cool $31 mil. The New Yorker's David Denby said it best: "The movie succeeds as a teen’s wild fantasy of a night in which everything goes wrong, revised by an adult’s melancholy sense that nothing was ever meant to go right."
Scifi thriller The Invasion, on the other hand, got no love. It did debut at #5 with $6 mil, but it probably won't fair well in the second week since the critics butchered it. It already started off on the wrong foot since it's the second remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Then it's release date was delayed because the producers weren't too fond of German director Oliver Hirschbiegel's ending and they decided to bring in the Wachowski brothers (Matrix) to wrap it up. Critics cite the dull vibe of Hirschbiegel's camera work oddly mixed with the the spectacle of the Wachowski's action scenes as one of the reasons it just didn't work. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B-, while the Tomatometer averaged 30% good reviews.
I was hoping The Last Legion did well and although it didn't get into the top 10, it made it to the #12 spot with $2.5 mil domestically and $4 mil in foreign theaters. Apparently the lack of press wasn't its downfall, so much as its poorly executed production and script. As for the UK indie Death at a Funeral, it made $2.5 mil worldwide, which isn't bad for just 200 theaters compared to Superbad's 3,000. Even though Entertainment Weekly gave it a C+, other critics were impressed enough to get it a 75% on the Tomatometer.
Despite the fact that the critics wooped Rush Hour 3's ass, it still stuck around in the #2 spot, reaching $88 mil. Bourne Ultimatum and The Simpsons--which have both reached $165 mil--are rounding out the the top 5. Stardust dropped a couple spots but is still hanging on to the #6 with just $20 mil. Daddy Day Camp and Skinwalkers did so badly they didn't even place in the top 12. Surprisingly though Hairspray is at $100 mil, Chuck and Larry is at $110 mil, and Underdog is up to $30 mil. But surely it's no shock to anyone that Harry Potter is closing in on $300 mil domestically and $900 mil worldwide.
There won't be a lot of shake up next weekend for the top 5 spots since there isn't much competition. Debuting will be a handful of celebrity-directed indies: Leonardo DiCaprio's global warming documentary The 11th Hour, Ethan Hawke's The Hottest State, and Justin Theroux's (Broken English) directorial debut Dedication starring Mandy Moore. Mr. Bean's Holiday comedy goes up against Scarlett Johansson's comedic adaptation of The Nanny Diaries, while Jet Li and Jason Statham's action flick War and Josh Hartnett and Samuel L. Jackson's boxing drama Resurrecting the Champ will go unchallenged. If I weren't headed to the theaters to see Superbad, I'd probably catch the Nanny Diaries and have plans to rent War and Resurrecting the Champ.
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