Weekend Box Office

Four avenging brothers easily unseated three hick cousins this week while two wedding party scammers gave way to one voodoo haunted woman. The raucous comedy The Dukes of Hazzard didn't have quite the holding power it might have hoped for against urban action flick Four Brothers or undermarketed thriller The Skeleton Key.

Two other films released last week grabbed middle ground on the chart. Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo managed to make the top five. Rob Schneider knew that the summer was almost over and managed to get his film in before his key demographic had better things to spend their money on, namely start-of-semester party kegs. Unfortunately, opening at $9.4 million means the movie will likely recover its $22 million production budget and we can brace ourselves for Deuce Bigalow 3 sometime in the not so distant future.

The Great Raid opened to mixed reviews, but has actually done relatively well at the box office. Its overall take of $3.4 million and tenth place position on the chart are pretty good given that it opened in less than a third of the number of theaters as anything else in the top ten. In fact, it was third best this week in per-theater earnings, beating out Dukes of Hazzard and Wedding Crashers. Without any plans to expand the film's release or hopes of recovering its $80 million dollar budget, Miramax sadly seems content to see this one come and go without much fanfare.

Four Brothers is also on shaky ground as next week sees the release of several films showing serious box office promise. The 40 Year-Old Virgin has taken one of the wackiest concepts out there and turned it into what our own Josh Tyler is declaring as one of the funniest movies ever made. Frankly it sounds to me like Steve Carell's excuse to write himself a role where he gets to make out with the delicious Elizabeth Banks. I can't say as I blame him. Either way, it's a good chance that film will take top honors.

On a side note, the penguins march onward having now managed to gross more than The Island by several million. They dropped for the first time this week after a steady two-month climb up the ladder to a high of number six. Expect the little guys to stick in the top ten one more week before vanishing into documentary history.