Monday Morning Box Office: Tuesday Morning Edition
America celebrated Memorial Day Weekend by going to the movies in record numbers. Hollywood thanks great American memorials everywhere for inspiring the historically-lucrative turnout.
1. Shrek 2 — $92.2 million
We keep having this dream: We're in bed, then suddenly awakened by a soft, almost purring voice tinged with the most hideous, faux-Scottish accent imaginable. "Eet's naut gawn hurr-et." And it doesn't, not until we notice curiously tiny DreamWorks head Jeffrey Katzenberg crouched at the foot of the bed, training a digital camcorder on our deflowering-by-ogre. Also, it's raining money. What do you think this means?
2. The Day After Tomorrow — $86 million
We spent a good portion of the weekend discussing differing levels of disappointment caused by viewing TDAT. Were you disappointed that not enough shit blew up? Or disappointed in the story? The ridiculous science? The lack of an appearance by Al Gore during the closing credits, assuring us that tornados and gigantic plot holes would decimate our fine city if we don't stop recklessly consuming Earth's resources? But we're pretty sure the folks at 20th Century Fox are disappointed (read: mass firings and scalded assistants) that they opened a disaster movie on Memorial Day Weekend and still didn't come in first.
3. Troy — $15 million
At least you can say this much about Brad Pitt's performance: He's getting a lot of mileage out of that hilarious Irish half-accent he learned for The Devil's Own.
4. Raising Helen — $14 million
Raising Helen helped boot Van Helsing from the top five. But you'd still have to scorch our genitals with a hot kebab to get us to see it. Apparently America has a higher pain threshold than we do.
5. Soul Plane — $7 million
As promised, we bought a ticket to Soul Plane, snuck into TDAT, then regretted we didn't just watch Soul Plane. Still, Raising Helen finished fourth. This is a cruel world we live in.