Pandas Off The Hollywood Endangered List
Whether you spent your Sunday pridefully snorkeling Jäger bombs in WeHo or simply watching the Lakers' Championship hopes slip away, chances are, you're feeling pretty gnarly this morning. Here's some box-office-numbers hair of the dog to ease your crushing hangover:
1. Kung Fu Panda - $60 million
The proposed steel-cage bout pitting DreamWorks' deadly plushy versus the horse-hung Mossad assassin who's also handy with a crimping iron (or whatever the hell that movie is about) turned out to be unfairly matched: Panda swiftly minced his opponent into sabra-fruit marmalade. And while Jack Black scored high with audiences as the voice of the endangered hero, Seth Rogen stole enough scenes as the movie's insectoid master-of-deflection that his perpetually stoned character's spin-off movie—Tae Kwon Do Stick Bug—will be fast-tracked into production for a summer 2010 opening.
2. You Don't Mess with the Zohan - $40 million
$40 million is certainly nothing to sniff at, particularly for a movie whose premise left 99.7% of Sandler's core fan base scratching their backwards-baseball-caps. ("What's with the hairdressing stuff?" "Why's he talking with an accent?" "What's Israel?") And while they were lured in with the promise of broad Sandler-style comedy, they left with a far greater understanding of Israeli foreign policy, which was stealthily embedded into the proceedings via Rob Schneider's uncredited cameo as Golda Meir. We thought he delivered the, "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values," speech from Munich stirringly.
3. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - $22.805 million
This brings the grand total for Indiana Jones and Uh, Did We Just Wander Into Caddyshack? to $253 million, or one dollar per phoned-in performance, chintzy-looking set-piece, and CGI eyesore.
4. Sex and the City - $21.31 million
No need to panic, ladies. You still rule Hollywood with a mighty, manicured fist. The Official Movie of the Female Gender™ may have seen a 63% drop since last week, but that was fully anticipated by Warner Bros., They insist City will "find sturdier legs over future sessions," presumably once the cast has a chance to unbuckle those 7-inch stilettos and file down their bunions.
5. The Strangers - $9.289 million
Choosy moms pick The Strangers' floppy masks over Funny Games's crisp tennis whites nearly 2-to-1 as their random-home-intruder family-torture-porn uniform of choice!