Weekend US box office report: Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is the big cheese

It's kind of rare that all four major releases for a weekend fall in the top five, but that's what happened this weekend. Of course, the movie I thought would do the best wasn't the top one, because I thought it would do well. The movie I figured would be second, though... that one was actually successful. In fact, you could say all the new releases were successes this weekend.

The big winner was, of course, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. The delicious-sounding animated film from Sony brought in an impressive $30.1 million over the weekend (review here), which was kind of stunning considering that the trailers don't make the film look like anything special, just something with loads of special sauce on its burgers. Still, people ate it up. (Did I work in enough puns? Yes? Good, moving on.)

Second was The Informant!, which managed $10.5 million. Not a bad debut for a comedy-filled Insider-type of film. Even if it does have a bankable star in the title role, it's kind of a hard-sell genre mixed with another hard-sell genre. Plus, Matt Damon's mustache is crazy.

Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself was the lone holdover film to crack the top five. The further adventures of Madea (complete with Straw Dogs rip-off poster that someone noticed last week) brought in another $10 million this weekend, bringing Madea's total to nearly $38 million. I really don't get this guy's appeal, but who am I to argue with moneymakers?

Love Happens was another surprise success, with $8.4 million this weekend. The shocking lack of success has to be Jennifer's Body, which took fifth with $6.8 million. Given how it's gotten huge promotion, it's a horror movie, Diablo Cody wrote the script, and Megan Fox is something of an It Girl at the moment thanks to Internet gossip mongers, I figured this one would be successful. It's not as if it's not successful, but I thought for sure it'd be top two or three at the box office. Maybe Megan Fox's semi-bad publicity has been damaging the movie? Not sure. 

The inventive 9 drops from second last week to sixth this weekend on $5.45 million. It's a shame to see it drop so low, especially since it's such an interesting-looking film. Hopefully, it'll do a bit better internationally. It's not the kind of movie that needs a lot of talk.

Inglourious Basterds drops to seventh this weekend on $3.6 million. I should get to see this one soon. I'm a big Tarantino fan, but after Death Proof I've been a little hesitant to make the jump out there to see his next project. Still, $110 million in domestic grosses suggests that maybe it's not all bad. Of course, Tyler Perry's made a fortune and All About Steve (eighth place, $3.4 million) has made $26 million, so maybe that's not entirely accurate.

In ninth and tenth place we've got a pair of horror films. Prepare for a lot of horror over the next few months. Sorority Row brought in $2.489 million for ninth, and The Final Destination took tenth with $2.37 million. 

Hey, speaking of horror, this weekend features a sci-fi horror film in the form of Pandorum! I don't know anything about it, but there's monsters and it's in space, so let's say it's like Aliens and call it a morning (at least until Friday). There's also a sci-fi action film starring Bruce Willis called Surrogates, which should make huge bank despite his frightening wig, and there's the very frightening remake of Fame. Nothing like taking a bad idea and making it worse by redoing it 30 years later!