Casino Royale was the movie that was meant to introduce Daniel Craig as the hard-headed, ultra-realistic, gritty new James Bond, but it seems like the public was more interested in watching a bunch of cartoon penguins doing a bit of a jig.
Happy Feet – the lovely animated film about penguins that sound like Nicole Kidman, Robin Williams and Elijah Wood – is number one at the US weekend box office, edging out new James Bond film Casino Royale. Which conclusively proves that the majority of people would have rather had a mansized penguin that sounds like a Hobbit as the new James Bond than a blonde thug who seems to own every single piece of electronics that Sony has ever made.
The animated movie is going through a weekend box office golden period at the moment. So far Ice Age 2, Open Season and about nine billion other computer generated films have topped the US weekend box office so far this year, and now it's the turn of Happy Feet, a cartoon about penguins from the man who gave you Babe and, er, Babe 2: Pig In The City. Happy Feet is an unexpected US weekend box office number one since its release coincided with Casino Royale, the movie that finally remoulded James Bond for a depressing new generation. Why didn't Casino Royale become the US weekend box office number one as expected? Perhaps it's because overlong product placement-filled films about boring card games starring a man who got his teeth punched out as a midget just aren't the box office draw they used to be. Here's the US weekend box office top five…
1 – Happy Feet (A film with a strong underlying message of conservationism. Turns out we can fight global warming by breakdancing on a glacier and doing all kinds of tired old impressions just like Robin Williams) $42,320,000
2 – Casino Royale (Featuring sterling work by Giancarlo Giannini as The Nice Man Who Helpfully Explains Just What The Hell's Going On Every 90 Seconds To Us Idiots Who Don't Really Understand How To Play Cards Properly) $40,600,000
3 – Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan (Looking forward to the DVD extra of the Borat movie where everyone who's in the movie lines up to smack Borat in the mouth repeatedly) $14,350,000
4 – The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (The success of the oddly-timed release of The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause means that the movie Tim Allen Is The Man Who's Happy It's 2009 will now be greenlit for a 2007 release) $8,218,000
5 – Flushed Away (The makers of Happy Feet must be breathing a sigh of relief that the scenes of penguins getting flushed down a dirty toilet were removed in a last-minute editing blitz, lest it aped the box office failure of toilet-heavy Flushed Away) $6,812,000
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