'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' enchants family audiences

By Sarah Sluis

Earning three times as much as the second-place movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs whipped up $30.1 million over the weekend. It also earned $2.5 million from its 127 IMAX locations, a

per-location average that was double the non-IMAX total. It doesn't face any competition until two weekends from now, when Disney releases Toy Story and Toy Story 2 as a 3D double feature, so it should perform strongly through its second weekend. People at Sony Pictures Animation also have reason to be happy: it's the highest-grossing opening weekend of any of their movies, including Surf's Up or Open Season.

The other three wide releases earned in the $6-10 million range, though their low production costs should mitigate their lower opening weekend grosses. The Informant! earned $10.5 million, with Matt Damon considered the biggest draw to moviegoers. Its adult-heavy audience could stem its losses in following weeks, since many adults aren't set on seeing a film opening weekend.

The audience for teen draw Jennifer's Body should have turned out in force for opening weekend, but didn't . It scared up $6.8 million, dropping 50% from Friday to Sunday. The reviews didn't match the hype, diminishing the chances of expanding its audience beyond 18-25's, as screenwriter Diablo Cody's Juno was able to do. Many also suspect that younger teens were shut out of the movie since it was rated R.

Jennifer's Body was beat by the soundly unoriginal Love Happens, which sold $8.4 million worth of tickets to an audience of primarily older females.

Bright Star, which is specialty distributor Apparition's first release, did an auspicious $10,000 per

location for a weekend cumulative of $190,000, making good on critic Ray Bennett's prediction that "art-house audiences will swoon." Its rave reviews should help grow that number in coming weeks. Since PG romances are all too rare, Bright Star could also draw in older and more conservative audiences when it expands next week to 120 theatres.

This Friday, Fame will open widest, followed by sci-fi thriller Surrogates and sci-fi horror Pandorum. Other films opening small that we'll be watching include Capitalism: A Love Story (which opens Wednesday), Coco Before Chanel, and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.