Sometimes, we go to a movie expecting one thing and getting something entirely different. Not necessary bad, mind you … just different. We buy tickets for what we think is a sci-fi actioner and get instead deep ruminations on life and destiny. We ease into our theater chairs prepared for a sweet, Pixar-like movie featuring an awkward teen and his blimpy, computerized sidekick, and instead we’re given another squad of superheros.
So let’s give Dumb and Dumber To some credit: One look at the title, and you know exactly what to expect.
Apparently, a whole lot of folks wanted another dose of dumb this weekend. Despite being 20 years removed from the original Dumb and Dumber, Dumb and Dumber To stuffed an estimated $38.1 million into its conical dunce cap, strapped a box office championship belt around its middle and ran away, guffawing into the sunset.
It squeaked by two strong holdovers: Disney’s Big Hero 6 banked another $36 million to fly into second place. It also became the 25th movie to make more than $100 million in North America this year—the traditional benchmark dividing the blockbusters from the also-rans. ‘Course, the movie itself cost an estimated $165 million to make, so the folks at Disney probably aren’t raising glasses of bubbly quite yet.
Interstellar, Christopher Nolan’s cinematic trip through a wormhole, pocketed another $29.2 million in its second week, finishing at No. 3.
Hardly anyone went to see anything else—much to the chagrin of Beyond the Lights. The weekend’s other major release had a rather dim debut, earning just $6.5 million to finish a very distant fourth. Still, it did outshine the stubbornly durable mystery thriller Gone Girl, which spent its seventh weekend inside the Top Five with a $4.6 million weekend.
Oh, and Kirk Cameron’s latest big-screen adventure, Saving Christmas, decked the halls with about $1 million, finishing around 15th place. Now, while those numbers sound less than merry, the movie’s per-theater average of around $2,500 isn’t ho-ho-horrible by any means (Gone Girl averaged $2,400 per theater, by comparison). At least it beats a lump of coal.
Final figures update: 1. Dumb and Dumber To, $36.1 million; 2. Big Hero 6, $34.7 million; 3. Interstellar, $28.3 million; 4. Beyond the Lights, $6.2 million; 5. Gone Girl, $4.6 million.
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