Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer is the number one movie at the weekend box office, making it the most successful opening box office movie starring a huge clod of angry shit since Steven Seagal's Half Past Dead.
Although critics have derided Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer's lack of creative integrity, pointing out that the movie does nothing more than shamelessly reduce a well-respected comic book franchise down until it only panders to the world's stupidest children while existing merely as a promotional tool to sell reams and reams of dodgy Fantastic Four merchandise, future generations will come to see Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer's box office victory as a historically important moment, in that – by reaching the weekend box office number one spot – Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer helped delay Jessica Alba making nothing but a string of low-budget made-for-TV erotic thrillers by up to two years.
Now that Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer is the top movie at the US weekend box office, the question on everyone's lips is "Just what the hell is a silver surfer, anyway?" And the answer is simple – the Silver Surfer is a superhero created to maximise on a brief 1960s fad for surfing. A similar, though far less successful – attempt to meld superheros and unusual transportation crazes came in 2002 with The Bronze Man Who Rides A Segway Around Sometimes. His film is due for release in 2009. Here's the weekend box office top five…
1 – Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer (We can't have been the only ones who misread 'Fantastic 4 2' and cacked themselves because they thought they'd missed out on 40 other deliberately childish superhero movies about stretchy men, big giant poo things and Jessica Alba being basically unable to emote, surely) $57,400,000
2 – Ocean's 13 (Where Don Cheadle is wisely made to spend a large portion of his screen time pretending to be an American motorbike rider to disguise the fact that his British accent sounds like Dick Van Dyke drowning to death in a sea of snooker balls) $19,105,000
3 – Knocked Up (Poor Britney Spears – not only does her Mum now regularly sell her out in magazines, but thanks to Knocked Up she's not even the owner of the most spectacular baby-crowning in popular culture any more. Whatever next?) $14,535,000
4 – Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End (Containing the second most tiresomely gay pirate in the world after the man who sells knock-off porn DVDs outside Hong Kong subway stations) $12,024,000
5 – Surf's Up (See? Silver Surfers = popular. Small feathered surfers that eat fish and sound suspiciously like the boy from Disturbia = not really that popular at all) $9,300,000
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