Adam Sandler asserted his box office power once again. Put him in the lead role of a comedy — a goofy comedy not a serio-comedy — and he will likely give you a good opening weekend with a run north of $100 million.
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry opened at the south end of his recent comic outings, but it was strong enough, at $34.2 million, to lead the weekend's box office, outrunning Harry Potter to the finish line. The movie proved not to be terribly memorable, but is still not likely to disappoint fans much. It fell shy of what I thought it would do, but it is no less a good opening for Sandler, and a good showing for Kevin James in his first top billing (next to Sandler).
The one other film that made it to the top ten this week was Hairspray, the musical based on the broadway show, based on the 1988 John Waters film of the same name. I found it to be a hard one to predict, as musicals have not done terribly well lately, and it features John Travolta in drag (not to mention the fatsuit).
I figured it would fail to crack $20 million, but it blew well past that to settle at nearly $27.5 million. I saw it opening night, and although I found it to be thoroughly enjoyable, it did not bring anything new to the table. Still, it was so infectiously upbeat and innocent that it was hard to not smile while watching the film. Also, it seems High School Musical star Zac Efron turned out to be quite a draw amongst the tween set, based on the anecdotal evidence of the crowd sitting around me at the screening.
As for last week's top movie, Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, it settled for number 2 at roughly $2 million behind the leader. I had expected a stronger second week, considering it has been getting good word of mouth. But I guess most of the Potter-heads stayed home to plow through the recently released seventh, and final book. Still, it did pretty well, and I suspect it will level off a bit next weekend.
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