The law of diminishing returns states, more or less, that a fourth brainlessly obvious spoof of some vaguely popular horror films should be drastically unpopular. Tell that to Scary Movie 4 – it's top of the US weekend box office.

Scary Movie 4 isn't just top of any old US weekend box office, though. It's top of the Easter US weekend box office and – what's more – Scary Movie 4 is the most popular-ever Easter weekend box office movie, proving once and for all that there's nothing Americans like more than watching the annoying woman from Brokeback Mountain telling jokes about half-remembered films from 2004 and then falling over.

The record-breaking US weekend box office success of Scary Movie 4 entirely compounds the rule of the fourth sequel. Batman And Robin, the fourth Batman film, drowned in its own ridiculous nipples and killed a franchise for eight years. Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol was a film so bad that it made Police Academy 6 look like Police Academy 2. And there's also Superman 4 – where the major plotpoint involved some of Superman's hair.

But Scary Movie 4 hasn't succumbed to all this nonsense, and has proved to be even more popular at the US weekend box office than Panic Room, the previous Easter weekend box office record holder. You know what this means, don't you? More new Scary Movie sequels until the end of time. We hope you're satisfied. Here's the US weekend box office top five in full:

1 - Scary Movie 4 (Sadly, Scary Movie 4 doesn't feature any spoofs of Hostel. The writers should have come to us for some help with that – we've got a file an inch thick full of jokes about young girls having their eyes blowtorched out for money) $40,222,875

2 - Ice Age: The Meltdown (Hopefully the stupendous success of Ice Age: The Meltdown means that that annoying weasel thing can now afford all the acorns in the world, and a slave to put them directly into his mouth. Because if we have to watch one more TV advert about a poncey weasel running after an acorn, we won't be held responsible for our actions) $20,026,625

3 - The Benchwarmers (Here's a surprise: a movie that the studios didn't pre-screen for reviewers has ended up with bad reviews – something which we'd put down to sour grapes by the critics, had The Benchwarmers not been a shitty-looking sports comedy starring three witless idiots) $9,913,291

4 - The Wild (A Madagascar rip-off starring Jack Bauer, Captain Kirk and
Eddie Izzard that's directed by a man called Spazz. How could it fail?) $9,684,809

5 - Take The Lead (That's Take The Lead, as in "be in control" and not Take The Lead as in "here Antonio Banderas, swallow these lead pellets." And that makes us sad.) $6,783,697

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Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo

[story by Stuart Heritage]