For 'Shrek Forever After,' $71 million is a not-so-happy beginning

By Sarah Sluis

The second and third installments of Shrek both opened to over $100 million, so perhaps it's fitting that the final movie, Shrek Forever After, started winding things down, with a $71.2 million debut. DreamWorks

Animation probably saw the writing on the wall with Shrek 3, which earned just 2.6 times its opening weekend. By comparison, the first Shrek movie earned an astonishing 6.3 times its opening weekend, while Shrek 2 earned 4.1 times its opening weekend. Most animated movies have better-than-average holding power, but Shrek movies have started to play more like franchise blockbusters, drawing in first-week audiences but then failing to catch on among a wide audience or those who have grown tired of the franchise. Good reviews for the fourth film could help this movie in coming weeks, as will its three competition-free weekends before another 3D animated sequel hits the market, Toy Story 3. Even with diminished returns the fourth time around, if Shrek Forever After can bring in three times its opening weekend, it's set for over $200 million in the U.S.

"Saturday Night Live" skit-turned-movie MacGruber attracted just a small subset of SNL viewers for an

underwhelming $4.1 million weekend and sixth place finish. The comedy was the first SNL skit to be made into a movie in ten years, and its poor performance does not bode well for another skit adaptation to hit theatres. I personally was not even a fan of the skit, which was pretty one-note, and it appears many other viewers felt the same way and passed on the movie.

A Bollywood movie cracked the top ten this week. Kites brought in $1 million to debut in eighth place. Our critic Frank Lovece described the movie as "not what most audiences think of when they think Bollywood," but the Bollywood-lite emphasis on fate, romance, melodrama, and action may have been just what American audiences were looking for. An even shorter version, Kites: The Remix, will open this Friday, intent on attracting mainstream audiences.

The strongest returning films in the top ten were Letters to Juliet and Date Night. Letters to Juliet dropped just 32% to $9.1 million in its second weekend. Summit predicted strong word-of-mouth two weeks ago after holding sneak previews of the film, and it appears they were right. Date Night held steady with a 26% slide in its seventh weekend, earning $2.8 million. The stars of these two films are among my favorites and most "likable," which I think has something to do with their movies' holding power.

Among specialty films, Solitary Man had the highest per-screen average, $22,500. Michael Douglas "delivers one of the finest performances of his career," according to critic Kevin Lally. With an 81% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating, this movie is poised to do well in coming weeks.

This Friday, female audiences will finally have their turn to make a film go to number one with the debut of Sex and the City 2, and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time will seek to enchant younger-skewing and family audiences.