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Movie Monday: Dinner for Schmucks

Inception has been, for the folks over at Warner Bros., a dream of a movie. For the third straight week, the Christopher Nolan/Leonardo DiCaprio thriller thumped the competition at the box office, claiming the top spot with $27.5 million. Steve Carell’s Dinner for Schmucks sauntered into second place with $23.3 million, while the Angelina Jolie spy actioner Salt managed to cling to third with a little more than $19 mil.

Plugged In didn’t much like Dinner. Reviewer Bob Hoose said that “raw gags and sleazy sexual imagery are scattered around this pic like an overabundance of mouse droppings—leaving the whole film reeking with that dirty cage funk.” But the freshman film still outperformed two other more family-oriented newcomers—Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore and Charlie St. Cloud. So does this mean that 2010, which thus far had been dominated by family-friendly flicks, taking a turn for the “adult?”

Well, perhaps. But Despicable Me, now in its fourth week, outperformed Cats & Dogs and Charlie St. Cloud by about $3 million. Cloud, starring Zac Efron, felt like a film that had a limited draw and modest expectations. And though Cats & Dogs was released on more than 3,700 screens, perhaps the public’s desire to see CGI-enhanced talking animals has finally been sated (as if we didn’t learn our lesson from Marmaduke).

Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.