Night at the Musem a walk in the park with $54 million in first weekend

By Keith Williams

Night at the Museum 2 takes things up a notch

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 5/24/09 — Robots from the future went up against relics from the past this Memorial Day Weekend with Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian bringing to life an estimated $53.5 million at 4096 cultural institutions, easily defeating Terminator Salvation’s $43 million at 3530 junkyards. Dance Flick, the latest spoof-fest from the Wayan Brothers, found few partners at 2450 hoedowns, attracting a lowly $11 million worth of dance tickets.

Despite striking fear in the hearts of all those who love comedies – that is, funny ones – Shawn Levy, the director of NATM2, as well as those Pink Panther remakes, defied critics and naysayers alike by delivering a sequel that not only got better reviews than the first but posting the biggest grosses ever for a Ben Stiller opening.

Script was apparently much funnier this time, Amy Adams stole hearts with her acclaimed performance as Amelia Earheart, and special effects got a particular mention for actually being special.

Life without Arnold proved difficult for the otherwise record-breaking Terminator series.
Coming back for a third time, though minus ex-terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger (apart from a brief CGI glimpse), T4 seems to have already mopped up what fan interest there is, with the rest of the cinema-going population suspiciously indifferent.

Choice of director in McG, he of Charlies’ Angels infamy, was considered bold if possibly disastrous, and though the opening grosses of $13million on Thursday, and $56 million so far would have proved okay in the past, for the present they’re nothing remarkable. The future it would seem does not bode too brightly for this revived franchise, not helped by the cancellation of the Terminator tv series. In the words of its over-serious, over-qualified star Christian Bale, f**k that if you think I’ll be back.

Having started the current trend for pop-referencing other genres with 2000′s Scary Movie ($42 million opening weekend), the latest from the Wayan Bros finds its grosses more the size of Verne Troyer than the heights they once attained. Usually good for five laffs per movie, the series that followed was apparently hilarious enough for those desperate to show how clever they were getting those references.

Unfortunately, the copycats that followed in their wake – yes, SuperHero Movie and Disaster Movie, we’re talking about you – succeeded in not only stamping out even that 5 laff ratio, but also suffocating any interest in further efforts, by anyone. The one good thing that came out of the Scary Movie phenomenon was actress Anna Faris. Unless she did them a favor with a non-credited cameo, Dance Flick offers absolutely no incentive whatsoever to be seen when the targets of its mirth became tired parodies of themselves long ago.

With its warp-speed diminishing by 49%, Star Trek came in third with $22 million ($183 million in Klingon currency so far), Angels & Demons saw a drop in church attendance of 53.7% for $21 million in the poor plate, X-Men Origins: Wolverine had its claws cut by a further 46.9% for $7.8 million, leaving Ghosts of Girlfriends Past to haunt a spiritless $3.7 million on a 44% ectoplasmic drop.

Down at 8, Obsessed proved even less so than before, falling behind with a drop of 56.4% for $2million, at 9 Monsters vs Aliens crashed by 57.7% for $1.3 million, while a going-away card was given to 17 Again at 10, about to set off into the more remote parts of the charts with $1 million from a 70.2% plunge.

Weekend Estimates courtesy boxofficeguru.com