Can 5 million people be wrong? Well, the weekend takings for Rush Hour 3, the third in the Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker series, suggest that, yes, sometimes they can. The movie squealed its wackily racist way to number one at the US this week, with $50.2million. That's a good $17million below the previous movie, but still strong numbers for a part three and depressing evidence that Chris Tucker may continue making movies.
Last week's number one, The Bourne Ultimatum (Run, don't walk, to see this and beat people in the throat with a hardback book for a seat, if need be), lost just over 50% of its first week numbers, but stayed at number 2 with a pretty strong $33million. That puts the best movie of the summer at a very healthy $132.3million after two weeks. The Simpsons Movie added a further $11.3million for $152.3million after three weeks.
Matthew Vaughn's Stardust could not boast of stellar (oh, we couldn't resist) numbers on its first weekend. The $70million fantasy romp took just $9million for fourth place, despite a wide opening.
The only other new entry to crack the top ten was Daddy Day Camp, a movie which, though, as sequel to Daddy Day Care, is surely beyond redemption, but did slightly win us over with the brilliantly dreadful tagline 'This summer is going to be in tents'.
Waaay down the list at number 26 was Julie Delpy's 2 Days In Paris, which boasted the weekend's highest per screen average by several thousand and took a very healthy $181,000 on ten screens.