SAND, SWORDS AND SEX!

1. Shrek Forever After/Dreamworks Wknd/$ 43.4 Total/$ 133.2

2. Sex & The City 2/WB Wknd/$ 31.1 Total/$ 45.4

3. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time/Touch Wknd/$ 30.1 Total/$ 30.1

4. Iron Man 2/Paramount Wknd/$ 16.3 Total/$ 274.9

5. Robin Hood/Universal Wknd/$ 10.3 Total/$ 83.0

6. Letters to Juliet/ Wknd/$ 5.9 Total/$ 36.6

7. Just Wright/FoxSearchlight Wknd/$ 2.2 Total/$ 18.1

8. Date Night/Fox Wknd/$ 1.8 Total/$ 93.5

9. MacGruber/Universal Wknd/$ 1.6 Total/$ 7.2

10. How To Train Your Dragon/Para Wknd/$ 1.1 Total/$ 212.7

AND HE DOES IT WITH THAT SAME SCOTTISH BROGUE

Shrek Forever After holds at number one and it’s also a holdover from the days when Mike Meyers was a comedy god who could do no wrong. Do you think he calls up Tina Fey drunk and warns her it won’t last?

SINBAD AND THE CITY

Sex & The City 2 opens at number two and unlike it seems 99% percent of the fucking world, I didn’t see this and witness the destruction of western civilization. The show was 90% fluff and 10% lip service to something real. Yes, the movies have upped the budget on the fluff to the point where it’s almost another character rather than just the garnishment it once was, but until I see “adapted from The Feminine Mystique” in the credits, I’m really not expecting a whole lot of depth here. And the other big complaint is “cultural insensitivity.” What, you mean like 40 fucking years of James Bond films showing us how the whitest of white men can come into your country, kick your ass and fuck your women? Funny how I don’t hear any whining about that. No one was sticking up for Peru being a weak and corrupt government when Quantum of Silence came out. No one complained how there was an Arab literally just waiting for an opportunity to blow something up in Casino Royale. Seriously, is anyone truly shocked that a film about four incredibly privileged white American women has them acting like four incredibly privileged white American women when they visit another country!?! This is little more than a Crosby/ Hope road movie with fucking added to it. Last time they wound up in Mexico, this time The Middle East, next time probably Japan, because it’s a fashion hub and they already hit Paris on the show. If there’s any real flaw here it’s the destruction of the character of Samantha who was always over-the-top comic relief on the show, but we’re supposed to believe that a woman who has created her own successful business is going to blow the opportunity to work for a billionaire who also supports her ex-boyfriend client, because she can’t keep her legs closed and is oblivious to the cultural differences between America and the fucking middle-east? And they only use her for the cheapest of jokes. “Lawrence of my labia?” Seriously!?! That’s the best they could do!?! And where is this great respect for Middle Eastern culture coming from anyway, given the shit I’ve heard since 9/11. Is this how we ease our liberal guilt at all the crap we’ve otherwise let slide by attacking a deliberately silly and over-the-top summer movie? Sarah Jessica Parker must pay for the sins of Keifer Sutherland? Check yo’ self before you wreck yo’ self.

SOMEWHERE TOBY MAGUIRE IS LAUGHING

In a triumph for geeks everywhere, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time opens at number three, showing that Toby Maguire is a better box office draw than his prettier doppelganger, Jake Gyllenhaal (that they’ve played brothers is perfect casting). Yeah, you can throw Brokeback Mountain around all you want, but what Jake needs is a mainstream moneymaker to back up seeming years of immeasurate fame. Let’s face it: he’s mostly known for dating famous women like Reese Witherspoon and Kirsten Dunst…Toby Maguire’s ex. Clearly Jerry Bruckheimer thought he could capture the lighting in a bottle of Pirates of the Caribbean with a video game, forgetting that what made those films was Johnny Depp, not Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley---who could have easily have been swapped out for Jake Gyllenhaal and Emma Arterton without changing the film an iota. But closest we get to a Johnny Depp character is Alfred Molina as a tax-hating outlaw, who acts like he was brought in from a Monty Python film At any moment I expected him to start talking about the violence inherent in the system. What they’ve tried to do is combine the Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom characters into one and it’s clearly not working. There’s also the lack of a decent bad guy. Ben Kingsley is a good actor, but is merely asked to look sinister for two hours, whereas Geoffrey Rush was allowed to chew up the scenery a little. And while I’ve never played the Prince of Persia game, was this really a better bet than simply making it Sinbad and The Sands of Time? Sorry, but jumping from building to building---which is the painfully uninteresting shtick of the character---is no match for some big ass monsters. But they’d have to recast the female lead, because Sinbad was also about cleavage, not incredibly hot English voices.

THE YOUNG ARE SURPRISINGLY HARD TO KILL

Iron Man 2 is down to number three and once again guest commentary from someone younger, prettier and more talented than myself, we’ll call her Geek Girl The Next Generation:

Iron Man 2 was like having sex on the last leg of a Viagra high. The film starts off strong, but then lags in the middle and just when you suspect it might get a second wind and finish the job, it peters out. Afterwards there’s nothing left to do but to get up, go to the kitchen, pour yourself some scotch, grab a piece of leftover chicken from the fridge, and tell it you need to be up in four hours (not that this has ever happened to me). As it goes with a lot of sequels to superhero movies, one of the writers (in this case, Justin Theroux) gets trigger-happy while hopped up on old Marvel Comics, Adderall and keyboard cleaner. Instead of using the “one villain plus one personal conflict” (two if one’s incidental) formula that usually works with the best movies in the genre (see Spider-Man 2, X-Men 2), he feels the need to incorporate all six hundred story arcs into one movie (see Spider-Man 3, X-Men: The Last Stand). But just because you can doesn’t mean you should---messy things happen when you try to switch from doggy style to Blossoming Lotus to reverse cowgirl in rapid succession (once again, not that this has ever happened to me). Tony Stark is doing the old “I’m dying so I’ll keep it secret and be reckless” routine, so he has to figure out how to stop the palladium core in his reactor from poisoning him…AND he has to fight the government to keep his Iron Man technology…AND he has to fight against an arms dealer nemesis with a vendetta…AND he has to fight a Russian physicist thug…AND he has to fight the arms dealer and Russian physicist thug when they join forces and try to take him down but then the Russian physicist thug double crosses the arms dealer and tries to blow up Queens…AND he has to deal with Nick Fury trying to recruit him…AND he has to decipher some cryptic message from Roger Sterling (John Slattery from Mad Men appears as Tony Stark’s dad)…AND he still has to do general Iron Man shit…AND he has to mitigate the randomness of having DJ AM in the movie, and the resulting awkwardness about his randomness because he’s dead. See? That was a hell of a lot to read. And a lot of the time watching the film was like reading the above while Mickey Rourke breathes down your neck, hoping to snatch the cut crusts from your sandwich to feed to his pack of tiny dogs in a shanty off of La Brea. Iron Man 2 wasn’t a terrible movie, but it could’ve benefited from subplot editing—two hours is not long enough to give everything they tried to toss into this movie the time it deserved (and I didn’t even mention the horribly cast Scarlet Johansson). And after all that exhaustion and letdown, you’re not sure it’s worth grabbing that pack of Marlboro Reds off the nightstand for a post-coitus smoke (never. happened. to. me.).

THIS ONLY MATTERS IF YOU’RE NOT USING TIGHTS

Robin Hood is down to number five and one interesting aspect of this film is that Prince John is actually right when he blames his mother for her unquestioned support of Richard as he went Crusading, which has left the country bankrupt. He’s wrong about how he tries to deal with it, but right about whose fault it is. Also there’s a concern about the army coming home and how it might be better not to disband them because then you’d have a large force of military trained men whom you cannot pay inside the country. There’s even a moment at the beginning of the film when Robin winds up in a stockade because he was honest with King Richard about the immorality of The Crusades. But attention to realistic details is abandoned for more black-and-white adventure morality, which makes you wonder why they bothered to bring it up in the first place.

NEED A DATE MOVIE?

Letters To Juliet is down to number six, followed by Just Wright at number seven and Date Night at number eight.

I BLAME OLIVER STONE

MacGruber is down to number nine and also in this is Val Kilmer and remember when he was a leading man? Me too, as I’m sure, so does he. Both he and Robert Downey Jr. were great in Kiss, Kiss Bang Bang, but only one of them got a superhero franchise that makes the most of his utter weirdness. Of course, Kilmer is 50-fucking-years old, so his options are limited. He had his shot with Batman, but had the misfortune of Joel Schumacher as the director.

THE END

Finally, How To Train Your Dragon closes out the top ten at number ten.

DEATH NEEDS MORE ENTERTAINMENT

Death continues to take a few celebrities a week and you know Mickey Rooney is praying for a visit, but instead Art Linkletter gets his turn, as does one of The Temptations replacement singers, Ali-Ollie Woodson (he replaced Dennis Edwards who was brought in after David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks left) and Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper, both of whom had been suffering in their own ways for years.

GODS STILL WALK THE EARTH

You are fortunately to live in a time where Tracey Thorn (late of Everything But The Girl) and Shelby Lynne (late of absolute fucking greatness) release albums on the same day so you’d better make the most of it, you tasteless muthafuckas.