There was no stopping The Meltdown this weekend. Despite a hefty barrage of new release competition, the animated sequel joy ride continued it's steady glacial flow earning a comfortable $34.5 million. That's a 50% drop from last weekend (the standard decrease experienced by movies in their second week) but it's still a mammoth lead over the new arrivals.
The big surprise this weekend comes not from the top of the list but the bottom. Only showing on 300 screens, quirky, non-PC comedy Thank You For Smoking still earned enough to make the number ten slot. In a release pattern that mimics the wily workings of Brokeback Mountain distributors, the folks behind Smoking seem to be slowly innoculating the American public to its hazy concept with subtle increases in release width, allowing the word of mouth to do all the busy work. It seems to be working. Look for the film to soar even higher next weekend when it expands to 1000 screens nationwide.
SNL veteran comedy The Benchwarmers came in second with $20.5 million. That's a bit higher than I would have expected for a movie starring a bunch of guys whose days in the sun ended many moons ago. Still, there's no accounting for America's taste in humor these days. This is, after all, the same country that brought us Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector (which thankfully disappeared from the top ten after two weeks of tormenting our sensibilities).
Antonio Banderas and gang danced their way into the number three slot with a less than exciting $12.7 million. It's hard to be surprised since the premise laid out in the marketing belied the energy the movie actually contained. On top of that, how many dancing teen dramas can we really be bothered to watch?
Despite its tremendous star power, Lucky Number Slevin succumbed to the curse of the R rating/uninteresting marketing schemes. It only managed number five in its first weekend with $7.1 million. That probably doesn't even cover one of its big name salaries. Phat Girlz came in ninth place, which is about two spaces higher than I would have liked. That's all I'm going to say about that.
Next week is a toss up between Disney's one-year-too-late Madagascar competitor The Wild and the three-sequels-too-many Scary Movie 4. In the wake of Ice Age 2's success expect great things from The Wild. Apparently kids don't care if they're seeing the same things over and over again so long as they're amused. Of course, the same prinicple applies to the grown ups, so expect some success for Scary Movie as well.
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