Box Office: 'Meet the Parents' ... Again

Oct. 22 -- For the third weekend in a row, Meet the Parents topped the box office, with an estimated $16.3 million, for a total gross so far of $81 million.

It was a good weekend for comedies: Elizabeth Hurley in a schoolgirl outfit wasn’t enough to put Bedazzled on top, but the satanic comedy scored a solid second, with $13.7 million. The strike-breaking Hurley was all over the news this week, proving once again that no publicity is bad publicity.

Four Big Movies

The top four movies earned a staggering 73% of the total top 10 take. Now that multiplexes screen hits up to every half-hour, viewers can see the films they want, instead of settling for (but boosting the box office of) their Saturday seconds.

Two Oscar-hopeful prestige releases failed to generate the excitement of the top two laffers. Feel-bad weepie Pay It Forward may have surprised detractors with a third-place $10.2 million, but it will need to pick up the pace to gain traction in the increasingly desolate Oscar race. Reviews calling it “reprehensible” and “sickening” and “insultingly shallow” surely did not help the Helen Hunt/Kevin Spacey vehicle pack in the quality-film viewers that it needs.

Perhaps disproving Liz Hurley’s No-Publicity-is-Bad-Publicity motto, political potboiler The Contender, under attack from one of its own stars, has not yet parlayed its Gary Oldman body slams into paying customers. It lost a third of its business from last weekend, finishing 6th with a total take of $3.6 million. The presidential election and the popularity of the similarly themed TV drama The West Wing haven’t yet persuaded viewers to vote for the largely well-reviewed drama.

Martial arts master Jackie Chan dusted off one of his golden oldies, previously released in 1994 as Drunken Master II and now freshly dubbed as The Legend of Drunken Master, to kick his way to a 5th place finish, with a gross of $3.7 million.

Ladies Man Rebuffed

In news of the falling fast, extended Saturday Night Live sketch The Ladies Man lost almost half of last weekend’s business to finish 8th with a total gross of $2.9 million. And aptly titled Winona Ryder frightfest Lost Souls can perhaps blame the re-release of The Exorcist for its almost 60% falloff, to a 7th place finish with a $3.3 million gross. Maybe Winona and Linda Blair should have gone for that Charlie’s Angels remake.