LOS ANGELES (AP):
MAYBE NICE guys finish last, but Mean Girls came in first at the weekend box office.
The comedy starring Lindsay Lohan as a student who gets swept up in the backstabbing politics of fashion, love and popularity among high school cliques earned US$25 million, according to studio estimates yesterday.
Although it starred 17-year-old Lohan, the presence of Saturday Night Live star Tina Fey, who also wrote the screenplay, appealed to grown-up moviegoers. Overall, Mean Girls got its strength from girl power.
About 75 per cent of the audience was female and about half the audience was under 18, said Wayne Lewellen, head of distribution for Paramount, which released the movie.
"The teenage girl audience has a lot of clout and a lot of discretionary income from somewhere. They've got a lot of fun money and go to see movies in groups," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.
'MAN ON FIRE' DIPS TO NO. 2
Two of last week's top movies continued to perform strongly. The Denzel Washington thriller Man on Fire fell to No. 2 in its second week with US$15.2 million, and 13 Going on 30, which starred Alias TV actress Jennifer Garner as a child in an adult body, ranked third with US$10 million.
"We've got a new breed of female stars," according to Dergarabedian, who said the success of 13 Going on 30 and Mean Girls establishes Garner and Lohan as major audience draws. "These movies work because they don't talk down to teen girls," he said.
Three new films debuted with modest results. Laws of Attraction, a romantic comedy with Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore as feuding lawyers who fall in love, earned US$7 million to come in fourth.
STRONG COMEBACKS
Godsend, a horror-thriller starring Robert De Niro as a scientist who clones a dead boy, collected US$6.9 million, while Envy, with Ben Stiller as a suburbanite who covets the success of neighbour Jack Black, had US$6.1 million. Both films overcame critical pummellings to rank fifth and sixth, respectively.
After the runaway success of The Passion of the Christ, actor Jim Caviezel followed up his role as Jesus playing a real-life 1930s golfer in Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius. That film failed to rank in the top 10 in its debut, earning US$1.3 million.
The overall box office returns were US$90.5 million, down about 36 per cent compared to the same weekend last year. But this weekend's films were smaller in scale compared to last year, when X-2: X-Men United was the top movie with US$85.5 million.
