Does Anybody Really Win in the Battle Between Katherine Heigl and Talking Guinea Pigs?

Welcome back to Movieline Attractions, your regular guide to everything new, noteworthy and Galafianak-icious at the movies. This week, America's naughty Hangover hero goes PG with talking guinea pigs, Katherine Heigl fights off Harry Potter, and this generation's Dr. Strangelove explodes at the art house.

WHAT'S NEW: You've got to hand it to Disney, which slotted G-Force on the weekend directly following Harry Potter, dangerously installing its guinea pig spy romp (did I just write "guinea pig spy romp"? Wow, I just did it again) in the long box-office shadow of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. And as usual, it was a shrewd gamble: Potter, which is generally a movie for tweens and adults anyway, should probably fall off between 50-55 percent, and G-Force may yet court a few grown-ups willing to withstand the cheese factor to spend some post-Hangover time with breakout star Zach Galafianakis. Not that they'll make up more than a fraction of G-Force's $25 million opening, but every little bit helps.

Especially if Disney can draw them away from The Ugly Truth, the interesting new counterprogramming across the multiplex. Whichever agent or studio exec first envisioned Gerard Butler as a romantic lead (do we have to count The Phantom of the Opera?) will have his/her instincts either validated or crushed by Sunday; his stab at drama, P.S. I Love You, shuffled to $50 million last year, and Butler's raunchy new comedy with Katherine Heigl could have legs if word-of-mouth comes through for Sony. I'll start: I kind of liked it, but maybe that was just because I'd be glued to any rarity set in my hometown of Sacramento. Either way, the studio has marketed the crap out of it, and women just now shaking off their Proposal fog could nudge Truth as high as $24 million.

Also opening: The middling Sundance alumnus The Answer Man; the other middling Sundance alumnus Shrink; the zombie-necrophiliac-rape shocker Deadgirl (midnight screenings only); the Colombian immigrant love story Paraiso Travel; and Humpday, finally expanding to Los Angeles.

THE BIG LOSER: Orphan offers the X-factor for the weekend, a decently reviewed bad-seed horror entry relying on indie darlings Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga to open it on 2,600 screens. Summer's been light on horror overall, but Warner Bros. hasn't pushed this much beyond its that-little-girl-looks-mean-but-anyway-what-were-we-talking-about poster plastered here and there. As far as counter-counterprogramming goes, it's probably not the worst call moviegoers can make, and I might be way off by forecasting $11 million or less for this. But it's what could have been with Orphan -- like, say, what Lionsgate would have done with it opposite Potter, G-Force and Truth -- that provokes the most disappointment.

OSCAR-QUALIFYING WATCH: I've heard nothing but raves for One Minute to Nine, Tommy Davis's documentary about a woman's last few days at home before going to prison for murdering her abusive husband. HBO picked it up during its 2008 festival run and will broadcast the film later this year; a proper theatrical release is tentatively planned as well, but the non-fiction obsessive in you can check it out this weekend as it qualifies for an Oscar push in Encino and Washington Heights.

THE UNDERDOG: My most vivid memory of In the Loop's Sundance premiere was laughing so hard I broke into a coughing fit, which I struggled to suppress for about 90 seconds -- until I started laughing again to the point of uncontrollable hacking. (And that was before I came down with the obligatory Park City head-cold.) Your results may vary, but writer-director Armando Iannucci's rabbit hole of politics, sex, war and other international intrigues is about as fierce a satire of how diplomacy gets done as any I've seen in years. From Peter Capaldi as a profoundly vulgar British press secretary (and behind-the-scenes warlord) to James Gandolfini as the dove-ish U.S. Army lifer who engages him, the ensemble cast succeeds where most contemporary satires fail: They uphold an extraordinary comic pace without ever leaving the film's ideas behind. It's mind-blowing stuff -- literally, in a way that doesn't really hit you until hours, even days later, when the memory of the film gives way to silent horror that yes, this really is your world. At least until someone drops the bomb, anyway. Laugh while you can.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's this week include both the original cut and the director's cut of Watchmen, the animated sleeper hit Coraline, Criterion's Jean-Luc Godard tandem 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her and Made in U.S.A., and new full-season box sets of Charlie's Angels, Pushing Daisies, Prison Break, Psych, Monk, and -- you asked for it -- the long-lost first season of Hotel.