Monday Morning Box Office: Meet Your New Movie Masters
We now refrain from addled tales of forced plastic surgery and half-assed literary allusions to turn our attention to the only place it belongs on a rainy Monday morning: the weekend box office numbers.
1. Meet the Fockers—$42.8 million
Even more chilling than a second weekend of dominance for the Fockers: In 12 days of release, it's grossed an estimated $163 million. We could attribute this to the comedic alchemy of Ben Stiller, Babs, Robert De Niro, and Dustin Hoffman, but let's be serious—this is a movie where a cat (hilariously!) flushes a dog down a toilet. Instead, we can chalk up its dominance to Universal's incredibly savvy (but ethically questionable) move to retitle the movie The Fockers Aid The Tsunami Victims in key markets. This week, they're expected to announce a bold marketing initiative to maintain their momentum at the box office: Every time George W. Bush is shamed into increasing the amount of disaster aid, Universal head Stacey Snider will order her studio to buy an additional $20 million in Fockers tickets.
2. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events—$14.7 million
If there's a lesson in this weekend's box office results for Jim Carrey, it might be this: Abandon all of this artsy "acting" crap for the warm bath of lowbrow comedy, just like Ben Stiller has.
3. The Aviator—$11.2 million
We've figured out the exact moment that Leonardo DiCaprio clinched his Oscar nomination: upon hallucinating a mischievous cat flushing an adorable dog down his toilet, DiCaprio's Howard Hughes begins urinating in milk bottles and defecating in empty Kleenex boxes. OK, we admit that we're a little fixated on the cat-flushing-dog thing, but we just can't stop giggling uncontrollably every time we think about it!
4. Fat Albert—$10.7 million
Oh, we didn't dream this? Our bad.
5. Ocean's Twelve—$9.2 million
How much does America love George Clooney's smirk, Brad Pitt wearing fancy clothes, and Julia Roberts trying to hide her pregnancy? This much.
