Here's hoping you had a pleasant Memorial Day weekend, free from third-degree BBQ burns and residual beer bloat. After the jump are the final, five-day box office tallies.
1. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
Gross: $70,000,000 (new)
Screens: 4,096 (PSA: $17,090)
Weeks: 1
The weekend provided a box office battle for the ages, pitting an army of tiny cowboys and Roman soldiers against a battalion of unstoppable mecha-warriors. In the end, however, only one would prevail. The Ben Stiller sequel finished the weekend $10 million ahead of the competition, a victory consecrated by Smithsonian's lisping, effete pharaoh holding aloft Sam Worthington's still-flickering, dismembered robo-head, and insisting the busted battalion of captured T-600s and Hydrobots bow before their new ruler.
2. Terminator Salvation
Gross: $53,800,000 (new)
Screens: 3,530 (PSA: $15,248)
Weeks: 1
The tepidly received McGerminator may have disappointed legions of fans hoping it would give the franchise the reboot it so desperately needed, but the weekend would provide a glimmer of hope after all: North Korea's proud announcement that it had successfully conducted its second nuclear test today brings the planet one step closer to Terminator's bleak vision, and a future in which a tiny band of humans fight for species survival against a new model of invincible, fabulous-sunglass-wearing robot-assassin: the T-Jong-il.
3. Star Trek
Gross: $29,400,000 (cume: $191,034,000)
Screens: 4,053 (PSA: $7,254)
Weeks: 3 (Change: -31.7%)
Star Trek is proving to have an impressive set of legs: long, powerful, and covered in green, just like the ones on that Orion chick Kirk banged in the Starfleet dorms.
4. Angels & Demons
Gross: $27,700,000 (cume: $87,811,000)
Screens: 3,527 (PSA: $7,854)
Weeks: 2 (Change: -40.0%)
The American appetite for a movie that marries National Treasure-style scavenger hunts with Se7en-style themed cardinal murders isn't quite as ravenous as it is overseas, where Ron Howard's latest dominated the market for the second week in a row.
5. Dance Flick
Gross: $13,100,000 (new)
Screens: 2,450 (PSA: $5,347)
Weeks: 1
Are there any genres left that have yet gone unspoofed? How about Sadomasochistic Euro Arthouse Movie? I'd pay to see that one, if for nothing else the hilarious scene in which Anna Faris gets drowned in a 30-second-long blood-ejaculate bath after lopping Leslie Nielsen's privates off with a grapefruit knife.
[Figures courtesy of Box Office Mojo]