Weekend Box Office (04/10/11): Hop stays on top, four new releases cannibalize each other, Insidious pulls stunning hold.

For the second weekend in a row, Universal's Hop was the number one film of the weekend. The Easter Bunny animated epic dropped 42% in its second weekend, grossing $21.6 million. That's a bit heavy for an animated film, but the lack of school for many kids has meant decent midweek showings, draining the 'must see on the weekend' factor. Regardless, the $63 million-budgeted film has already grossed $68 million in the first ten days. If it can fend off Rio next weekend (which is basically being sold by Fox as 'Angry Birds: the Movie'), it positions itself for a strong fourth weekend, which is of course Easter itself. Frankly, it will be fun to watch, as agnostic, atheist, and/or not-Christian families will likely check out Hop over that holiday weekend, while the more overtly Christian families will theoretically opt for Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family. This is another big win for Illumination and a solid hit for Universal. $100 million seems guaranteed and beyond that is mainly a matter of demo competition (a bunch of kid-friendly films over the next month) and whether it can keep screens as summer starts. As for those who read last week's roundup, I did see the film that Sunday, and it's relatively mediocre but utterly harmless. My three-year old enjoyed it, which counts for something, and it does make an effort to go in a different direction than many other talking-animal films (too bad it literally gives away the ending in the first scene of the film... WHY???).

Review: Your Highness (2011)

Your Highness
2011
102 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

David Gordon Green was once set to become the next Terrence Malick. His sober dramas of lower or middle class Americana (George Washington, Snow Angels, etc) were some of the finest examples of character-driven drama to come out of the last several years of independent cinema. Now the man seems stuck in a world where pointless brainless marijuana jokes and gay panic humor rules the day. Your Highness is fatally-stymied by a script by Ben Best and star Dannie McBride that still thinks that smoking weed is inherently funny, the 'f-word' is by-itself comic gold, and homosexuality is automatically repulsive. There are moments of successfully-ripping satire of 80s medieval action pictures, but (pardon the pun) higher aspirations go up in smoke.

Your Highness gets a red-band trailer.

More Your Highness Videos

I know the nerds have been going crazy over this one over the last 24 hours, but I'm not quite as impressed. Yes, the film looks pretty solid, arguably presenting a fantasy comedy (that may or may not pay homage to hack-n'-slashers like Dragonslayer and The Beastmaster) that feels more authentic than straight fantasy films like Eragon or Percy Jackson and the Olympians. But it just really isn't all that funny. Honestly, most of the would-be humor comes from characters using profanity in a medieval setting, which gets old pretty fast. Plus, while it's nice to see Natalie Portman in something a little different, would it kill the editors of this trailer to allow her to do or say anything funny at all in the whole 210 seconds? Fairing even worse is Zooey Deschanel, who spends the whole trailer as a damsel in distress. Yes, that's the archetype, but we know Deshanel can be highly amusing, so not give her a single funny line? It's no wonder Portman ended up writing a comedy script of her own. Still, it's kind of shocking that David Gorden Green, the man responsible for George Washington, All the Real Girls, Undertow, and Snow Angels (each one a masterpiece) is now making a go as the helmer of broad comedies such as this. I'm not sure if that's progress, but oh well.

Scott Mendelson