It's always good to know that, in these confusing times, you can always rely on a film about a tattooed man sticking a leech onto his eyeball to take almost three times more money at the US weekend box office than anything else.
That's right, Jackass Number Two is number one at the US weekend box office, and the $28 million it took over the weekend, when compared to Jackass Number 2's measly $11.5 million budget, will surely be enough to get Paramount bigwig Sumner Redstone dancing around his desk screaming "Screw you Tom Cruise, we gotta a man who drinks horse sperm!" with all the might his 83-year-old body will allow.
It seems weird – a few weeks after a nature TV presenter died after getting a bit too close to a stingray, and one week after a motoring TV presenter almost died by dicking around in a fast car – that people are still so eager to go and see Jackass Number Two; a film about a bunch of increasingly middle-aged men hurting themselves on fishing hooks, electrified stools, snakes and charging bulls in between slapping each other's bare arses all the time. But who cares – so long as these Jackass films keep making so much money, hopefully they'll stop Johnny Knoxville from actually acting in any real films for a while. Here's this week's US weekend box office top five…
1 – Jackass Number Two (Even though he attaches a leech to his eye, pushes a fishing hook through his cheek, has a man almost shit in his mouth and gets 350ml of beer poured up his bum, all this will pare into insignificance for British viewers at the thought Steve-O's most horrific-ever stunt – appearing on Love Island) $28,106,000
2 – Jet Li's Fearless (As in 'a movie starring Jet Li entitled Fearless' rather than 'Jet Li is Fearless'. If he went down that road, his next film would be called Jet Li's Getting A Bit Too Old For This Sort of Thing) $10,564,000
3 – Gridiron Gang (Strange to think that the inclusion of Gridiron Gang in the US weekend box office has ensured that Jackass Number Two – a film about lots of male genitals and anuses – only manages to be the second-gayest film in the top five this week) $9,700,000
4 – Flyboys (Apart from being a shoddy-looking WWII drama about Americans flying aeroplanes, Flyboys is also notable for the first time Jean Reno has played anything other than a French policeman for 138 films) $6,012,000
5 – Everyone's Hero (It's interesting to see that a posthumously-released cartoon directed by Christopher Reeve is called Everyone's Hero since he truly was everyone's hero. When Michael Winner dies, what are the odds of his first posthumous movie being called That Fucking Calm Dear Idiot?) $4,750,000
Read more:
Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo
[story by Stuart Heritage]