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On this sad day, there will be no weary preamble about the restorative properties of the box office numbers:

1. Mission: Impossible III—$48.025 million
Tom Cruise did everything we could ask of our highest-visibility movie star: plucked an actress from semi-obscurity just before the release of one of his blockbusters, scaled the Eiffel Tower to announce his intentions to marry her at an undisclosed future date, immediately pretended to knock her up, confronted various beloved celebrities over any behavior perceived as incompatible with his controversial religion, and, in the globe-circling publicity run-up to a second blockbuster capping an almost solid year of media ubiquity, finally selected a daughter from the baby-patch lovingly cultivated by an army of drones inside the walls of his compound, allowing him to share the joy of alleged biological fatherhood with the world.

And after all this, the best we can offer the man in return for his selflessness is a piddling $48 million on opening weekend? Some might view this meager result as a referendum on Cruise's fading stardom, but we are inclined to point the finger back at ourselves, the miserly, disloyal public, who uprooted the actor's beloved tentpole, and while his back was turned, bludgeoned him with it.

For shame, America. Tom Cruise deserves better than Scary Movie 4 money.

2. RV—$11.1 million
Robin Williams, on the other hand, deserves exactly what he's getting. Though we must admit that the raccoon attack endlessly promoted in the commercials looks totally hilarious!!!

3. An American Haunting—$6.4 million
It would hardly be a weekend at the movies without some crappy, low-budgeted horror movie to occupy America's bored teenagers.

4. Stick It—$5.5 million
Jeff Bridges as a gymnastics coach should've been enough to get us into the theater, but sadly, even the sight of The Dude shouting at growth-stunted teenage girls didn't do the trick.

5. United 93—$5.2 million
Are we too late to be the first to ask if it's too soon for a movie about 9/11? We've been meaning to take the public's temperature on this issue, but we got distracted by the incredibly charismatic guy on the motorcycle with the new baby.