2012 is the top movie at the weekend box office. And you don’t have to be a genius to work out why.

Two hours of John Cusack almost being smashed to death by falling rocks? Who wouldn’t want to pay good money to see that! Oh, we’re just kidding – 2012 is top of the weekend box office because it deals with the growing worry that the Mayan calendar was right and that the world will end in 2012.

And it probably will. After all, the Mayans were right about men originally evolving from mud, weren’t they? And about rain being a giant flying snake’s dribble. Nice one Mayans, you dead idiots.

Last week, the weekend box office success of A Christmas Carol demonstrated that cinema is now firmly getting ready for the festive season. And that’s been proven by the new weekend box office number one – 2012, the film about all of humanity perishing in a fiery rampage of harrowing devastation. Merry Christmas, everybody! Here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 – 2012 (Now that he’s had Earth destroyed by aliens, destroyed by a giant lizard, destroyed by bad weather and now destroyed by an ancient prophesy, what’s Roland Emmerich going to do next? If he’s reading, we’d like to direct him to our as-yet unmade screenplay, The Day The Earth Was Destroyed By A Little Boy What Done A Massive Trump. You’re welcome, Emmerich) $65,000,000

2 - A Christmas Carol (Suffering a noticeably large drop-off in takings compared to last week. Why is this? Because there’s four times more Jim Carrey in this than in any other film ever made? Oh. Yes, that’s probably why) $22,325,000

3 - The Men Who Stare At Goats (If you liked The Men Who Stare At Goats, you’re just going to love its highly anticipated sequel, The Men Who Peek At Ocelots) $6,200,000

4 - Precious (A story about a fat woman who’s sad because she’s fat. It will win Oscars because it’s sad and it’s got a fat woman in it) $6,090,000

5 - Michael Jackson’s This Is It (This is the third week in a row where This Is It has been in the weekend box office top five. Since we heard that it was only going to be in cinemas for a fortnight, we’re sorry to say that we’ve run out of Michael Jackson jokes. Just kidding – we’ll never ever run out of Michael Jackson jokes. But we can’t be bothered to think of one right now. Sorry) $5,100,000

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Merry Christmas, everyone! Ho ho ho! What did you get for Christmas? Anything good? Did it snow?

Ho ho ho! Ho ho… hang on a minute. It isn’t Christmas. It isn’t anywhere remotely near Christmas. It’s barely November. We haven’t even started to build up our reserve of goodwill towards all men yet. In fact, we still think most men are wankers.

So why is A Christmas Carol the number one movie at the weekend box office? Because it’s not very good and everyone’s trying to get it out of the way early so that it doesn’t bugger up everyone’s Christmas? Oh, right.

A Christmas Carol is the number one movie at US the weekend box office, even though Christmas is still quite a long way off. Not that we’re purists or anything, but we might have preferred it if Disney was a little more time-sensitive with its releases. You know exactly what we’re suggesting – that Disney immediately withdraws A Christmas Carol from cinemas and replaces it with a film called A Carol About A Slightly Overcast Monday Afternoon In Early November. Do it, Disney! You know we’re onto something!

Still, it’s not all bad. At least now Jim Carrey can add ‘Computer animated movies based on timeless novels’ to his list of things he should probably never do again, along with ‘films about how scary numbers are’ and ‘beards’. Here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 – A Christmas Carol (Robert Zemeckis‘ annual attempt to make a realistic-looking motion capture film. At the rate he’s progressing, he’ll finally come up with a film that doesn’t make us want to spend an entire week sitting in a corner with a torch, terrified and awake and clawing at our skin with our fingernails by about 2076) $31,000,000

2 - Michael Jackson’s This Is It (A mighty from last week. Maybe that ‘In Cinemas For Two Weeks Only!’ marketing plan was a little optimistic after all. Let’s hope the DVD sales are better, otherwise Sony had better start printing up stickers reading ‘Not Given Away Free To Anyone Who Spends More Than A Tenner At HMV For Two Weeks Only!’) $14,000,000

3 - The Men Who Stare At Goats (Have you ever stared at a goat? It’s rubbish. This film’s rubbish. Shut up) $13,300,000

4 - The Fourth Kind (It’s the film that literally everyone is calling ‘The Paranormal Activity that’s about aliens and nobody really gives a shit about’…) $12,500,000

5 - Paranormal Activity (… And so if people care less about The Fourth Kind than they do Paranormal Activity, and yet The Fourth Kind is higher than Paranormal Activity at the weekend box office, then that means that people care less about Paranormal Activity than they do about Paranormal Activity. Argue with THAT logic) $8,600,000

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Obviously Michael Jackson’s new film This Is It would top the weekend box office this week. Obviously.

It had everything going for it. Michael Jackson’s millions of fans are using This Is It as a way to pay tribute to his life. Plus This Is It will only be exhibited theatrically for two weeks, so everyone will see it at the same time. Plus no other big films opened on Friday, giving This Is It a clear path to weekend box office glory.

Also, given the choice between This Is It and Law Abiding Citizen, who wouldn’t choose the harrowing documentary about the painfully thin spectre-like drug addict in the silly wig?

So, as we’ve made clear, This Is It is the number one movie at the US weekend box office this week. As much as that’s a testament to Michael Jackson’s legacy as an entertainer, credit should also be given to the movie’s producers for rolling the film out in such a short space of time.

It’s a shame, though – we were sort of hoping that Jermaine Jackson would be a producer because, given his handling of the Austrian tribute concert, we were looking forward to seeing a film called Michael Jackson’s This Is It… No, Wait, This Is It. Alright This Is Nearly It. Sort Of. Oh Bugger It, We’ll Bring It Out Next Year Instead (Even Though We Probably Won’t). That’d be much more in keeping with Michael Jackson’s life. Here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 – This Is It (And this really is it from Michael Jackson, too. Apart from the DVD release. And the one-year theatrical re-release. And the remastering of Michael Jackson’s entire back-catalogue. And the 20 albums of unreleased material that Michael Jackson recorded that’ll be slowly dripped out over the next decade or two. And every other conceivable way that people think they can squeeze any extra drops of cash out of Michael Jackson’s body. But, yeah, apart from that, this is it) $21,300,000

2 - Paranormal Activity (Apparently things are scarier when they’re recorded on cheap equipment. That’s why Saw 7 is going to be filmed exclusively with a newsagent’s static CCTV camera. We heard that most of the torture will revolve around a three-week-old copy of Grazia magazine, you know) $16,540,000

3 - Law Abiding Citizen (Bore Abiding Citizen, more like. Are we right? Huh? Are we right? Seriously though, we have no interest in this film whatsoever) $7,303,000

4 - Couples Retreat (Hey, Couples Retreat has been in the weekend box office for ages, maybe it’s actually quite good after all. Or maybe everyone on the planet is stupid. Yes, that’s probably the reason) $6,097,000

5 - Saw VI (Where Jigsaw runs out of pointlessly confusing ways to kill people and just shoots someone in the first minute, then does a nice wordsearch for the remainder of the film) $5,560,000

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The number one movie at the weekend box office contains terrifying footage of a freakish undead figure.

No, not This Is It. That comes out on Wednesday. We’re talking about Paranormal Activity - the film that was made for $11,000, is widely referred to as ‘the scariest film ever made’ and has gradually been climbing the weekend box office chart as word of mouth about it grew.

Best of all, Paranormal Activity has beaten the latest Saw movie at the weekend box office, too. So here’s hoping that a new, incrementally rubbisher, Paranormal Activity movie gets released every year to help us forget how good the first one was, too! Hooray!

SPOILER ALERT: Paranormal Activity probably isn’t the scariest film ever made. But it’s probably one of the best-marketed, which is why it’s number one at the weekend box office. There have been internet campaigns to get Paranormal Activity a wide release, rumours that Steven Spielberg thought his copy was haunted, leaked internet videos of audiences screaming for their lives, breathless blog reviews, all adding up to make a quite unexpected torrent of hype.

And, admit it, if you haven’t seen Paranormal Activity, you want to. No? The lead actress has got quite big boobs. Oh, now you want to go and see it. You people are disgusting. Here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 - Paranormal Activity (Speaking of which, what’s the inevitable porno remake of Paranormal Activity going to be called? So far, we’ve only got ParaWHOREmal Activity, Paranormal SPANKtivity and PARROT-ANAL SCAT-GIVE-IT-TO-ME. Do help out if you can) $22,000,000

2 – Saw VI (Whereby Jigsaw, realising that he’s literally run out of inventive ways to kill people, just listlessly slaps a man on the forehead with one of his shoes for 90 minutes) $14,800,000

3 – Where The Wild Things Are (SPOILER ALERT! The wild things are either in the boy’s imagination or on an island or something) $14,400,000

4 – Law Abiding Citizen (A bit like Saw, really, except it’s got Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx in it, so we’re even less likely to watch it) $12,7000,000

5 - Couples Retreat (OK, we’re sorry for whatever it is we’ve done. Just stop this being in the weekend box office. Please) $11,100,000

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Today’s edition of the weekend box office countdown is brought to you with a side helping of tremendous bitterness.

You see, the number one movie at the US weekend box office this week is Where The Wild Things Are – one of the films that we’ve been most excited about this year. And yet we can’t see it until almost Christmas. Because it’s not being released over here until December. Stupid Britain.

So no Where The Wild Things Are spoilers please. Especially no spoilers about the temperature of the soup at the end of the film. We mean it.

So Where The Wild Things Are is top of the weekend box office this week. And that’s definitely a good thing. Because it has once and for all proved that children’s movies can be slightly dark and ambiguous and leftfield, and still be commercially successful. So here’s looking forward to that Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs remake where the entire second act involves Andy Samburg having a confused existential meltdown and despairingly shouting the word “WHY?” at the palm of his hands over and over again in a rainstorm for 45 minutes.

Here’s the weekend box office top five…

1 – Where The Wild Things Are (Gee, now Spike Jonze has turned Where The Wild Things Are into such a weekend box office success, maybe we’ll see more arthouse directors take on children’s films like this. Personally we can’t wait for Vincent Gallo to adapt The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but only because he’ll probably make it about blowjobs) $32,470,000

2 - Law Abiding Citizen (So we have to wait until December to see Where The Wild Things Are, but Law Abiding Citizen is released here a full month earlier? Thanks a lot, God. You bastard) $21,250,000

3 - Paranormal Activity (When Steven Spielberg watched Paranormal Activity, he became so convinced that his DVD was haunted that he’d only carry it around if it was tied up inside a binbag. In other news, Steven Spielberg is a twunt) $20,163,000

4 - Couples Retreat (Just two exclamation marks stop this film’s title from being a fairly accurate review for any married people who are planning to go and see it) $17,949,000

5 - The Stepfather (Locke from Lost was in the original version of The Stepfather, you know. That’s the only thing we know about it. No joke here, sorry) $12,300,000

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Good for Vince Vaughn. After Fred Claus and Four Christmases, people thought he could only make godawful Christmas films.

But who’s laughing now? Couples Retreat – the newest Vince Vaughn movie – is the number one movie at the weekend box office, so take that everyone. Couples Retreat has proved once and for all that Vince Vaughn doesn’t only make godawful Christmas films – he makes godawful films that are completely independent of traditional religious festivals, as well. Vince Vaughn wins again!

Oh, and Couples Retreat co-star Jon Favreau wins again, too! God knows how badly that man needed a hit movie.

So Couples Retreat is the number one movie at the US weekend box office. We for one are pleased to hear it – after all, it has a who’s who of comedy for a cast list, including Fred Claus, that fat bloke who always has bit-parts in Vince Vaughn films, the woman from Ben Stiller’s forgotten 2007 The Heartbreak Kid remake, Leon, the least interesting one from Sex And The City, someone from Who’s Your Caddy and Jason Bateman from Teenwolf Too. That has weekend box office success written all over it, doesn’t it?

Anyway, enough of this nonsense. Let’s crack on with the weekend box office top five…

1 – Couples Retreat (We’re disappointed that Couples Retreat is the weekend box office number one, because its success might stop Vince Vaughn from making any more Christmas movies. Because, come on, what says Christmas more than a fat bloke endlessly yammering a bunch of directionless flabby ad-libs in an embarrassing film that you feel somehow tricked into watching?) $35,340,000

2 - Zombieland (Hands up who else heard that Zombieland was a movie about a violent idiot running around a land full of drooling, unthinking walking cadavers and immediately assumed that it was a documentary about the Isle Of Sheppy? No? Just us?) $15,000,000

3 - Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (Let’s just all agree that we ran out of things to say about this movie long ago and move on. Deal?) $12,000,000

4 - Toy Story / Toy Story 2 (3D) (Looks like re-releasing Toy Story in 3D made a lot of financial success. And that means one thing – the Alvin & The Chipmunks 3D re-release can only be days away. Hooray!) $7,674,000

5 - Paranormal Activity (A Blair Witch-style mockumentary that some people are calling the scariest film ever. By people who haven’t seen Big Momma’s House 2, presumably) $7,066,000

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Big week for the weekend box office this week – just look at all the incredible films that were released on Friday.

There was Michael Moore’s latest, searingly topical, effort. Drew Barrymore’s debut as a director. The latest breathlessly-anticipated movie by The Coen Brothers. That Ricky Gervais film that’s garnered glowing reviews from all corners. Which one of these equally worthy new releases ended up topping the US weekend box office chart?

Oh, it was Zombieland. A film about Woody Harrelson shooting a bunch of zombies while wearing a funny hat. Of course – why didn’t we think of that?

Sorry if we came off as a bit cynical in the last paragraph. We didn’t mean to be. In fact we’re actually thrilled that Zombieland has topped the weekend box office. For one, Zombieland actually looks sort of fun. And also it’s nice to see Woody Harrelson do something other than write meandering letters about his birthday to judges to try and stop Wesley Snipes from going to prison.

But mostly we’re thrilled that Zombieland is the weekend box office number one because it’s a comedy-horror. And Jennifer’s Body was a comedy-horror. And everyone said that Jennifer’s Body failed because it was a comedy-horror. But Zombieland’s success has destroyed that argument, so hopefully it means we can go back to thinking that Jennifer’s Body failed because Megan Fox isn’t very good at acting. Works for us. Here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 - Zombieland (A film that asks you to imagine that, to ensure the survival of the human race, you have to constantly be in close proximity to Woody Harrelson. And it isn’t even a morbidly depressing melodrama. Weird) $25,000,000

2 - Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (A movie where people eat things that fall from the sky isn’t really so fanciful. True, we say that six weeks into our new Hailstones And Pigeon Shit diet, but so what?) $16,700,000

3 - Toy Story/ Toy Story 2 (3D) (Yay! Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3D! Brilliant! Hopefully the royalty cheques will stop Tim Allen from making any more films for a while! Yay!) $12,500,000

4 - The Invention of Lying (Some are saying that The Invention Of Lying’s modest opening is a sign that Stephen Merchant was really the funny one all along. This is obviously stupid because, as The Office and Extras proved, the funny one was always Fat Keith and Dean Gaffney respectively) $7,350,000

5 - Surrogates (If the producers of Surrogates had just called the movie Bruce Willis In A Silly Wig, we’re sure it would have done much better. Please note that the tactic wouldn’t work as well for Nicolas Cage films, because Nicolas Cage In A Silly Wig could easily refer to any Nicolas Cage film ever) $7,344,000

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Why didn’t we see this coming? What are the two things that people love more than anything else? That’s right.

Meteorology and mechanically-reclaimed meatstuffs. And that’s why Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is the weekend box office number one again. It’s not because no good films were released this week, or because all people are stupid. It’s because Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs finally combined the public’s twin loves of overcast weather and globs of nonspecific meat.

Or not. Look, it’s a cartoon about meatballs. We’re finding it hard to care about this one, to be honest.

OK, so let’s get right down to it. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is the weekend box office number one for the second successive week. Let’s run it against the Generic, Forgettable Animated Movie Checklist to see why.

Is Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs based on a beloved children’s book? Yes. Is it running in 3D? Yes. Does it star a number of comic actors hired specifically to boost the movie’s credibility? Yes. Are there poo jokes in the trailer? Yes.

Oh. Right. That’s why, then. Here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 - Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (Officially now the most successful film about balls since Paris Hilton’s last home video. Boom TISH!) $24,600,000

2 – Surrogates (So let’s get this straight – there’s a computer-controlled world where anybody can be anyone they want, and Bruce Willis decides to be Bruce Willis in a shit wig? Makes sense) $15,000,000

3 – Fame (Fame! FAME! I wanna live forever! I wanna learn how to do less well at the weekend box office than a film about Bruce Willis in a shit wig! WIG!) $10,033,000

4 - The Informant! (The exclamation mark at the end of this movie’s title is important, because that’s the only thing distinguishing it from its upcoming sequels, The Informant?, The Informant?!?! and The Informant ) $6,915,000

5 - Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself (Tyler Perry’s I Can Make Bad Movies All By Myself, more like. Boom TISH! What? Everyone else on Earth has already made that joke? And the joke about Paris Hilton too? Oh look, we’ve been away for a week, cut us some slack) $4,750,000

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Good old Tyler Perry. There genuinely isn’t a traditional box office lull that he isn’t ready to plug with one of his awful films.

This time it’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself. Or, to be more accurate, Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself. He adds his name to everything you see, just so audiences can be certain that they’re watching genuine Tyler Perry mawkish, unfunny, boring, Chicken Soup For The Soul-esque dreary codswallop instead of an inferior imitation.

Anyway, that’s the weekend box office number one. So it’s true – there really are that many idiots in America.

So Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself is the number one movie at the weekend box office. Which means that when it’s released in the UK it’ll… oh, hang on, no. It won’t be released in the UK, will it? Because if there’s one thing we don’t need it’s a hopelessly preachy sermon about the power of the family delivered by an unusually tall man dressed up like a fat old lady. No, we like our drag queens a little different over here. They need to be more sophisticated, more overtly ridiculous. More married to David Beckham.

Here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 – Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself (Working title: Tyler Perry Presents Tyler Perry And The Tyler Perry Players In Tyler Perry Can Do Bad All By Himself Starring Tyler Perry, A ‘Tyler Perry Clearly Has A Disturbing Ego Problem And Should Be Professionally Halted As Soon As Possible’ Production) $24,030,000

2 - 9 (That’s 9. Not to be confused with Nine. Or The Nines. Or District 9. Or Nine Months. Or Nine 1/2 Weeks. Or Nine To Five. Or Nine Songs. Or Nine Lives. Or The Whole Nine Yards. Or The 39 Steps. Or Shanghai Noon) $10,856,000

3 - Inglourious Basterds (It’s like Valkyrie with a better ending, they say, failing to note that the best possible ending that Valkyrie could have had was one that came about a millisecond after it began) $6,546,000

4 - All About Steve (Well done Sandra Bullock. Now you can’t do that old thing of turning your back on romantic comedies because you say you’ve mastered them. Because, quite blatantly, you haven’t) $5,800,000

5 - The Final Destination (That Krista Allen, she’s a sucker for 3D, isn’t she? Why, it only seems like yesterday that we saw her having sex with an alien on a spaceship in a 3D scene from one of her softcore Emmanuelle movies – now she’s getting her eye smashed out by a pebble in 3D too. She covers her bases, that one) $5,500,000

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Eat it, James Cameron – all that talk about Avatar ushering in a new era of 3D magic was a lot of tits.

For starters, Avatar looks like bum. And secondly, Avatar can’t usher in a new era of 3D magic because The Final Destination has already ushered it in. For the second week on the trot, The Final Destination is number one at the weekend box office.

Why? Well, what would you rather watch in 3D? A blue Jar Jar Binks buggering about pointlessly, or a woman getting her face smashed off by a runaway racing car tyre? Exactly.

The Final Destination is the top movie at the US weekend box office for the second week, probably because it utilises digital 3D technology in a way that will never be bettered. Sure, Miley Cyrus and The Jonas Brothers may have released movies in 3D, but did Nick Jonas get his chest cavity crushed by a clump of falling masonry in his movie? Did Miley Cyrus’ torso get squished through a wire fence in her movie? No. The answer is no. Case closed.

Here’s the weekend box office top five…

1 – The Final Destination (They say this is the last film of the Final Destination series. If it is, then Saw had better start figuring out 3D technology pretty sharpish. We want to see a man drowning in liquidised pig intestines in three glorious dimensions, damn it) $12,435,000

2 - All About Steve (Not as good as The Proposal, apparently. Read that again – this film isn’t as good as the film where, for no reason, Sandra Bullock dances around a campfire singing about her sweaty testicles to a pensioner. And they said it could never be done) $11,200,000

3 - Inglourious Basterds (Apparently this was based on an old movie from the 1970s, called something like Overlong And Boring War Nonsense That Nobody Has Ever Seen And Fewer People Have Liked, probably) $10,847,000

4 - Gamer (A film where someone literally controls Gerard Butler in a videogame. And doesn’t repeatedly throw him off a cliff onto a procession of jagged rocks, the massive tit) $9,000,000

5 - District 9 (A film that teaches you to think twice about your attitudes towards immigrants. Specifically, about how you shouldn’t spray yourself in the face with any of their jism or something) $7,000,000

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You can say a lot of things about Quentin Tarantino – mainly about his great big stupid chin if you like – but don’t say he never learns.

Remember Valkerie, the movie where Tom Cruise tries to kill Hitler but bollocks it all up? Not a great big hit at the weekend box office. But Inglourious Basterds, the movie where Brad Pitt tries to kill Hitler and then does, is a super duper number one hit at the weekend box office.

Or maybe it’s because everyone really wanted to see what Eli Roth is like as an actor. No? No, we didn’t think so either.

Inglourious Basterds is the new number one movie at the weekend box office, and presumably that’s because it contains a perfect storm of ingredients – Brad Pitt’s box office pull, Quentin Tarantino’s visual flair, the average hecklerspray commenter’s gross inability to spell two simple words correctly and utter, utter mind-bending boredom. Yes, that’s probably it. Anyway, here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 - Inglourious Basterds (Wow, it looks like deliberate misspelling is the hot new craze at the moment. Let’s try it – Inglourious Basterds iz a pyle off furkken shet. Hey, it’s fun!) $32,602.000

2 - District 9 (Peter Jackson had a hand in producing this. It’s hard to tell though, because nobody who’s seen it has lapsed into a tedium-induced coma three and a half hours into it yet) $18,900,000

3 - GI Joe: Rise Of Cobra (Again, we really must state that – despite the suggestive title - GI Joe: Rise Of Cobra isn’t a porn movie. Sienna Miller doesn’t make porn movies. She probably will in a few years to fund the drug addiction she’ll develop when she realises that starring in a hokey second-rate action film about some toys is as good as her career will ever get, but she doesn’t yet) $12,500,000

4 - The Time Traveler’s Wife (Soon to be made into a TV show, if reports are to be believed. Presumably it’ll be just like Quantum Leap, only for shitheads) $10,025,000

5 - Julie & Julia (You know what’d be funny? If Julie & Julia starred Julie Andrews and Julia Roberts. Or Julie Martin from Neighbours in the mid-1990s and the Beatles song Julia. Or bloody something) $9,000,000

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We’re not really sure why, but this weekend saw the release an unusually large amount of movies.

One of them features several pig-ugly, slime-covered sub-humans who look like they suffer from chronic hygiene problems. But sadly Bandslam didn’t even make the US weekend box office top five this week. Instead, alien sci-fi movie District 9 is number one.

Do you see what we did there? We said that Vanessa Hudgens looks dirty and slimy. She isn’t, of course. At least not until her next batch of naked photos hit the internet. We give it a fortnight.

So District 9 is the top movie at the US box office this week, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s benefited from a fiendishly clever marketing campaign, the fact that some reviewers are calling it one of the best sci-fi movies ever made, and the way that its director did that advert about the ice-skating robot car – possibly the best sign of quality going.

Plus Harry Knowles from Ain’t It Cool has given District 9 a frothing, wildly enthusiastic review – a rare accolade that he only doles out to about 85% of the movies he sees and 100% of the movies he sees with aliens in it. So it must be good. Here’s the weekend box office top five…

1 - District 9 (Newcomer Neil Blomkamp made District 9 under the tutelage of Peter Jackson, which means that his next film will be 400 hours long and feature over a million endings lined up one after another. Marvellous) $37,000,000

2 – GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra (The Rise Of Cobra? That sounds uncomfortably like a description of an erection, doesn’t it? Still, this will be remedied during next year’s sequel, GI Joe: The Massive Veiny Cock) $22,500,000

3 - The Time Traveller’s Wife (Did you like My Sister’s Keeper, but worry that it wasn’t mawkish and soggy and pointless and crap enough? Well then you’re going to love The Time Traveller’s Wife! Also, you’re a dick) $19,205,000

4 - Julie & Julia (Meryl Streep looks funny and sounds weird when she talks. But we don’t know what she’s like in this film. LOL!!!1!) $12,400,000

5 - G-Force (Disney really missed a trick here – a film about violent guinea pigs called G-Force? That’s good, but a film about violent guinea pigs who live in Oxford, drive vintage cars and take their time solving a number of confusingly genteel murders called G-Morse? That’s gold. You hear us? Gold) $6,908,000

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Right then, GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra is the number one movie at the weekend box office. This much we know.

But that’s it. That’s literally it. Ahead of its release, Paramount decided not to screen GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra for anyone – and we’re not stupid enough to actually pay to see it – so we haven’t got the slightest clue what happens anywhere in the movie whatsoever.

We think it’s got a cobra in it. And some bloke called Joe. And it’s about Action Man, so none of the characters have any genitals. That would make sense.

OK, OK, we’re being deliberately naive here – we do know what this week’s weekend box office number one GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra is about. We’ve seen the trailers, after all – it’s clearly about a couple of chaps backflipping through missile fire in slightly-altered Stormtrooper uniforms. And Sienna Miller really really wishing that someone will ask her to be Catwoman one day. And nothing else. There, that’s saved you a few quid, hasn’t it? Here’s the weekend box office top five…

1 – GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra (Based on the popular children’s toy Action Man, notable for its shifty eyes, moss-like hair and profound lack of human genitals. For the life of us, we can’t understand why Shia LaBeouf wasn’t given a role in this) $56,200,000

2 – Julie & Julia (A film starring Meryl Streep that’s based on a blog. Which is great, but will Meryl return our calls for her to play us in Hecklerspray: The Movie? No she bloody won’t. What a bitch) $20,100,000

3 – G-Force (Disney really missed a trick here – a film about violent guinea pigs called G-Force? That’s good, but a film about violent guinea pigs who are constantly on the brink of a multiple orgasm called G-Spot? That’s gold. You hear us? Gold) $9,804,000

4 - Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (Incidentally, why has Draco Malfoy aged 30 years in the time it’s taken the rest of the Harry Potter cast to age eight years? We’d love to know) $8,880,000

5 - Funny People (Some people are calling Funny People Judd Apatow’s Annie Hall. Great – that means we’ve still got Judd Apatow’s Cassandra’s Dream to look forward to. Joy) $7,866,000

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Funny People is the top movie at the weekend box office this week, and it’s not difficult to see why.

No, not because of Adam Sandler. Or Seth Rogen. Or Judd Apatow. No, Funny People is number one at the weekend box office because there’s nothing that people love more than  ridiculously long films that don’t really seem to go anywhere and aren’t quite as funny as anyone expected.

But still, Funny People’s US weekend box office success proves that you don’t need flashy CGI characters to be popular – just Adam Sandler being slightly less unbearable than he usually is.

Funny People is 146 minutes long. For comparison’s sake, that’s seven minutes shorter than Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince. And, really, they’re similar movies – in its duration, Harry Potter managed to fit in the destruction of London by monsters, several burning buildings, an army of monsters attacking a wizard who kills them all with a tornado made of fire and the death of a major character. Meanwhile Funny People takes roughly the same time to show a major character thinking he might die but then not dying. See? They’re almost identical. Here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 – Funny People (Maybe Funny People topped the weekend box office because it’s called Funny People and there are some funny people in it. It’s just very clear marketing. Other films should try this – that way The Proposal would be called Generic Sandra Bullock Vehicle #14 and Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen would be called Racist-Seeming Robots Punching Each Other) $23,440,000

2 - Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (We’re glad that Voldemort wasn’t in this film very much – given Michael Jackson’s recent death, the release of a movie about a ghoulish pale monster with a missing nose wouldn’t have been particularly tasteful) $17,700,000

3 – G-Force (Disney really missed a trick here – a film about violent guinea pigs called G-Force? That’s good, but a film about violent guinea pigs who guff a lot called G-Farts? That’s gold. You hear us? Gold) $17,058,000

4 - The Ugly Truth (For a woman who constantly complains about every role she’s given, Katherine Heigl makes some pretty lousy films, doesn’t she? No joke here, just an observation) $13,000,000

5 - Aliens In The Attic (We have a feeling that Aliens In The Attic was pitched to Fox as ‘The X-Files meets daytime BBC One antique-based gameshow Cash In The Attic’. We’re disappointed – especially since we’ve spent the last four years of our life writing a script that’s essentially Battlestar Galactica meets Dickinson’s Real Deal) $7,800,000

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G-Force sounded great, didn’t it? For a start, it’s called G-Force, so that promises all sorts of explosions and excitement.

And it stars Will Arnett, Tracy Morgan, Bill Nighy, Zach Galifianakis, Nicolas Cage, Loudon Wainwright III, Penelope Cruz, Steve Buscemi and Sam Rockwell too, so we assumed that it had to be excellent.

But no, G-Force is a film about some guinea pigs. And it looks like the worst film ever made. But, hey, it’s number one at the weekend box office this week, so what do we know? Other than that all people are idiots, obviously.

If you ask us, there aren’t enough films about animals doing hilariously human things. So thank heavens for US weekend box office number one G-Force – a film about some guinea pig spies – for adding to the hopelessly small canon of work that only really includes Kung Fu Panda, Surf’s Up, Ratatouille, Flushed Away, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Shark Tale, Madgascar, Antz, Over The Hedge, Ice Age, Ice Age 2, Ice Age 3 and about 400,000 other identical films. So great job, G-Force! We salute you!

Here’s the weekend box office top five…

1 - G-Force (Easily the most exciting film ever made about guinea pigs. Because it’s the only movie ever made about guinea pigs. Because guinea pigs are rubbish. Still, Nicolas Cage, eh? We’re in) $32,152,000

2 - Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (So it turns out that this movie got its name because of a message written inside one of Harry Potter’s science textbooks. Which means that if Harry Potter went to our school, the movie would have been called Harry Potter And The Julie’s Got A Hairy Minge) $30,000,000

3 - The Ugly Truth (The film where Katherine Heigl has a When Harry Met Sally-style tableside orgasm. Except it’s a genuine orgasm instead of a simulated one. And it’s given to her by a fat child. It’s funny, because leaving cinemas feeling so uncomfortably grubby that you’ll probably go four or five nights without sleeping is funny. Apparently) $27,000,000

4 - Orphan (A film about a creepy, evil child who seems much older than she actually is. Essentially Dotty Off EastEnders: The Motion Picture) $12,770,000

5 - Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs (Apparently there’s going to be an Ice Age 4 coming soon. SPOILER ALERT: He doesn’t get the bloody acorn) $8,200,000

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