Teens turn out for Efron's #1 finish, '17 Again'

By Sarah Sluis

Catching the last wave of students on Spring Break, 17 Again won the weekend with $24 million. While the teen comedy opened lower than last week's tween topper Hannah Montana: The Movie, which brought in $32 million in its opening weekend, both Disney-bred stars were able to open a film in the #1 spot, something the Jonas Brothers failed to do this February.

Because Miley Cyrus fans make it a priority to see the film opening weekend, her film dropped 61% from last week, finishing at #4 with $12.6 million. Her next project, The Last Song, penned by Nicholas Sparks, will have almost the same set-up (she will play an out-of-line teen sent to live with her estranged father, instead of her grandparents), so hopefully her fans won't be weary of the premise.

Right below 17 Again, State of Play came in at #2 with $14 million. The journo-political thriller was expected to suffer the same fate as Crowe's fall film Body of Lies, which opened at $12 million, but tacked on another $2 million to the earlier film's non-intriguing open.

Sequel Crank: High Voltage opened at #6 with $6.5 million, a slightly disappointing performance. The first film, which opened on Labor Day weekend of 2006, brought in $12.8 million. Still, its performance might be enough to greenlight a Crank 3.

Among returning films, Monsters vs. Aliens dropped 40% to earn $12.9 million at #3. Fast & Furious brought in $12.2 million, and Observe and Report slid 60% to $4 million. The controversial comedy's #7 finish will probably be its last in the top ten. The oldest film to make the list, I Love You, Man, brought in $3.3 million in its fifth week in release.

Among specialty films, Every Little Step had the highest per-screen average, earning roughly $9,000 per screen. Second-runner-up Is Anybody There?, which stars Michael Caine and posted a $7,000 per-screen average.

This Friday, no film will release above 2,400 screens, which is on the small side for a wide release. In honor of Earth Day, Disney releases Earth this Wednesday. On Friday, it will be joined by romance-thriller Obsessed, director Joe Wright's The Soloist, and Rogue Pictures' Fighting.

'Hannah Montana,' 'Observe and Report,' documentaries crowd the box office

By Sarah Sluis

If you are a girl between the ages of seven and thirteen, chances are you'll be at the movie theatre this weekend, watching what our critic dubbed an "utterly formulaic yet eminently watchable slice of Southern-fried cornpone." Yes, we're talking about Hannah Montana: The Movie, which sends the singer, who's turned into a bit of a diva, to live the "Simple Life" with her grandma in the country. She meets a cute boy who wears a cowboy hat (as all boys must do in the South), and uses her star power to throw a concert that will save the area from being turned into her old shrine, a shopping mall. It opens on 3,118 screens, but is expected to come in behind Fast & Furious, which has little competition in a field cluttered with kid-oriented films, among them holdover Monsters vs. Aliens and other newbie release Dragonball Evolution (2,181 theatres). Why so many films for the K-12 set? Spring break, which usually falls in April, right around the Passover/Easter holiday, the latter of which falls this Sunday.

For college students perhaps on spring break, R-rated Observe and Report opens this weekend. Inspired by Travis Bickle's character in Taxi Driver (if De Niro were Seth Rogen and a mall security guard), the film goes to the edge for comedy, including a borderline date rape scene that our critic called "the litmus test for deciding whether Observe and Report is darkly funny or deeply irresponsible." Opening in 2,727 theatres, the movie will likely open in the top five.

On the specialty front, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is another one of those literary adaptations that just makes you want to read the book. Our critic called the voice-over narration, a holdover from the book "not cinematically interesting," and noted that "the whole enterprise has a heavy literary tone that transmits onscreen as a certain unrelenting joylessness."

A cluster of documentaries release this week, with subjects ranging from rock bands to artists to war and poverty in developing nations. Documentarian Sacha Gervasi went out and found a band right out of This is Spinal Tap in Anvil! The Story of Anvil (3 theatres in NY/LA), an account of a band that keeps on going---still, as the joke goes, big in Japan. If the first film is a documentary version of a mockumentary, In a Dream is the reverse: a documentary that comes off as a "mockumentary of cinematic self-discovery." Using "overbearing" narration, director Jeremiah Zagar documents his artist father's work and even his dad's affair with his young assistant.

Moving to Lima, Peru, the documentary Oblivion focuses on "intentional forgetfulness and the forgotten," highlighting the class differences of a rich and poor society. Finally, An Unlikely Weapon tells the story of that Pulitzer Prize-winning photo taken during the Vietnam War of a South Vietnamese executing a Viet Cong, his face cringing in anticipation of his death. Whether you catch a teen singer in the country, that other mall cop, some dragonballs or one of the many documentaries coming out this week, we'll see you back here on Monday.