This edition of the weekend box office was supposed to be all about Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the Judd Apatow comedy that stars Russell Brand and some bloke’s todger.

But, oddly enough, Forgetting Sarah Marshall isn’t number one at the US weekend box office this week. That plaudit goes to The Forbidden Kingdom, a movie starring Jackie Chan, Jet Li and the second-weediest kid from the last series of 24.

What does The Forbidden Kingdom‘s weekend box office triumph over Forgetting Sarah Marshall tell us about the state of modern cinema? Is it that audiences still aren’t accustomed to seeing penises in their movies? Is it that the thrill of seeing cinema’s greatest living kung-fu artists in the same movie overpowers everything else? No. It’s that people would rather watch two old men kicking each other than Russell Brand in anything.

The Forbidden Kingdom is the number one movie in this week’s weekend box office. But The Forbidden Kingdom didn’t just beat the new Judd Apatow movie to the top spot – it also beat Al Pacino‘s new movie 88 Minutes. If only Al Pacino had the foresight to make a horrible cheap-looking Woolworths ad right before the movie came out, maybe we’d be looking at a totally different story altogether.

Here’s this week’s US weekend box office top five…

1 – The Forbidden Kingdom (The success of the mostly-serious, Asian-set The Forbidden Kingdom might just open up a new chapter of Jackie Chan’s western career after his recent descent into gormless kid’s movies. Let’s just check IMDb to see what his next film is. What’s that? Kung-Fu Panda? Oh, OK, never mind) $20,870,000

2 - Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Without the number one weekend box office movie that he was all but guaranteed, it looks as though Russell Brand’s big conquering of America will have to wait until his next movie. Let’s just check IMDb to see what that movie is. What’s that? An Adam Sandler film about a magical storybook? Oh, OK, never mind) $17,348,000

3 - Prom Night (Prom Night‘s still in the weekend box office top three? Wow, there really is money in this Jamie Lee Curtis revival scene after all. There is hope for our watered-down, piss-weak slasher rewrite of My Girl after all!) $9,100,000

4 - 88 Minutes (Someone tells Al Pacino he has 88 minutes left to live. Oddly enough, Al Pacino doesn’t spend those 88 minutes weeping and pleading with God to forgive him for Ocean’s Thirteen. It’s what we would have done) $6,800,000

5 - Nim’s Island (Is it wrong that we actually wouldn’t mind watching Nim’s Island? Is it? Does that make us bad people? Oh, who are we kidding? Of course it does. We apologise) $5,650,000

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Weekend Box Office - Box Office Mojo

Ah, Oscar night. The night when Hollywood celebrates the very best in modern moviemaking, while everyone else goes out and watches an example of fairly dire moviemaking.

Which is to say that Vantage Point is the top movie at the US weekend box office this week.

Not that Vantage Point had much competition, of course – on Oscar weekend most people are far too busy to go and see a movie, preferring to either speculate on the results of the Oscars or have lengthy discussions about the various Oscar gowns on show or hide in their garden, literally bury their head in a compost heap and scream "If I hear one more thing about sodding No Country For Old Men, I'll kill myself! I will, I'll actually kill myself!"

Vantage Point seems to have been trailed for about six or seven years up to this point. It hasn't succeeded in making the film look any good, but it has succeeded in making it look familiar enough for people to make it the weekend box office number one.

But what's Vantage Point about? Well, an important man gets shot and an intelligence agency uses all its sources to catch him and it's all told in a clever gimmicky way. But Vantage Point isn't like 24. It really isn't. Whatever you think, remember that Vantage Point absolutely isn't anything like 24. Here's this weekend's US weekend box office top five…

1 - Vantage Point (OK, we were lying. Vantage Point is exactly like 24) $24,000,000

2 - Jumper (Of course, if Hayden Christensen really did have the ability to jump through time, he'd have been able to do a lightning fast tour of Jumper screenings around the world and witness people saying "He's not a very good actor, is he?" in 13 or 14 different languages) $12,650,000

3 - The Spiderwick Chronicles (We're still determined not to bother researching what The Spiderwick Chronicles is actually about. We'd like to think that it's about one man's dream to make a giant candle and use Tobey Maguire as the wick to punish him for Spider-Man 3. We have a feeling the truth would only let us down) $12,600,000

4 - Step Up 2 The Streets (Being in the weekend box office for a fortnight hasn't made this movie look any better, but it's still doing better than Larry The Cable Guy's Witless Protection, which could only open at number 13. Larry The Cable Guy has clearly just worked out that sophisticated wordplay doesn't go down well with his target audience, something he'll remedy in next year's Larry The Cable Guy's I Farted And It Stinks) $9,787,000

5 - Fool's Gold (Again, Fool's Gold managed to do better at the weekend box office than Be Kind Rewind, which could only open at number seven despite being very good indeed. If Be Kind Rewind 2 ever gets released, though, don't expect to see a Sweded version of Fool's Gold, because there honestly isn't a way to make this film look worse for comic effect) $6,270,000

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Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo 

Now that it's into its second week on top of the US weekend box office, pundits are starting to call Enchanted the best Disney movie for years – and that's fighting talk for Brother Bear fanatics everywhere. Both of them.

But Enchanted's second week on top of the US weekend box office probably hasn't got that much to with how brilliant it is, rather it's an indication of how crap all the new movies that came out on Friday are. For example, would you rather watch Enchanted or a rubbish-looking film about Jessica Alba having it off with some bloke in a bath? Why, Enchanted of cour… what? Wait. People are dumb.

Enchanted is still the top movie at the weekend box office, following last week's sterling effort. Even though the weekend box office gross is 50% less than last week's, it's not difficult to see why Enchanted is proving to be such a hit. It's clear that by copying Shrek-style subversive humour, Enchanted has gone down a storm with moviegoers everywhere. So let's hope that Enchanted also copies Shrek's sequel policy, because the world is crying out for Enchanted 2, Enchanted The Third, Enchanted Goes Fourth, the Enchanted Christmas special, Enchanted: Smash And Crash Racing, Enchanted 4D and Enchanted in the Swamp Karaoke Dance Party. It is crying out for all of those things. Here's this week's US weekend box office top five…

1 - Enchanted (People are already calling Susan Sarandon's performance in Enchanted as Queen Narcissa her most blood-curdling since her turn in last year's Irresistible, but they're wrong. And if you've also been unlucky enough to have seen Irresistible, well, we're frankly surprised that you haven't tried burning your face off at the sheer futility of it all) $17,023,000

2 - This Christmas (Maybe This Christmas will go down in history alongside White Christmas and It's A Wonderful Life as a must-see Christmas movie. After all, there's nothing we like after eating a big Christmas dinner than watching a bunch of sub-Tyler Perry idiots discuss their emotional problems like they're reading Chicken Soup For The Soul off an autocue. No, our mistake, there's everything we like more than that) $8,400,000

3 - Beowulf (Such is the success of Beowulf that naked computerised Angelina Jolie has decided to do her own thing and start making painfully unpopular serious-minded movies about the emotional impact of war too, meaning that in the future a computerised version of the computerised version of Angelina Jolie will be needed to remind people that they only like Angelina Jolie when she's naked) $7,882,200

4 - Awake (Following The Fantastic Four 2 and Good Luck Chuck, this is further proof that Jessica Alba is getting more and more artistically bankrupt. We should be sad, but in fact this is a time for celebration – Awake's underperformance at the weekend box office has shortened the time before Jessica Alba commits herself solely to starring in erotic thrillers by anything up to 18 months) $6,011,000

5 – Hitman (A film charting the disastrous solo career of Pete Waterman after he split up with his professional nightclub-touring partner Michaela Strachan) $5,800,000

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Weekend Box Office - Box Office Mojo