"Game" not over, man

A strange and indifferent weekend at the box office: Feelgood pap (but feelgood Boston pap!) "The Game Plan" held on strongly and came out on top with $16.6 million, representing a more than acceptable second-week slide of 28 percent. But "The Heartbreak Kid" made only $14 million on 4,200 screens in 3,229 theaters, well below its expected landing point of $18 to $20 million.Other freshmen releases "The Seeker" and "Feel the Noise" did bupkis, not even cracking the $4 million barrier. Overall weekend grosses were down 11 percent from the previous weekend and 24 percent from last year at this time, when a little movie called "The Departed" debuted.

So what went wrong? Negative reviews for "Heartbreak" arguably had an impact, but you don't have to see "Night at the Museum" to realize that Ben Stiller's critic proof. No, I think the inherent unpleasantness of the movie's premise -- newlywed husband falls out of love with his wife on their honeymoon and in love with a different woman -- leaked out of the trailers and posters, putting off the distaff half of dating couples. The original 1972 "Heartbreak Kid" -- still out there on video and well worth catching -- was so cruel it went all the way through bad taste and came out mindblowingly funny, but even so it bombed with audiences. Moviegoers in 2007 are even less inclined to pay $10 to watch a schmuck ditch his wife. Or it may simply be that the Ben Stiller/Farrelly brothers gross-out meme has run its course. Either way: Big disappointment for the studio execs.

Things are looking up further down the charts, though, as "Michael Clayton" ricocheted off rapturous reviews for a $48,000 per-theater-average at 15 theaters (and this is the kind of movie that critics can make or break). "Lust, Caution" and "The Darjeeling Limited" are also posting healthy PTAs as they slowly roll out, and the re-release of the restored "Blade Runner: The Final Cut" (photo, above) pulled in $45,000 at each of its two theaters. Why, oh, why are they not releasing this in Boston?

How tepid is the fall, overall? The highest grossing movie released since Labor Day is "3:10 to Yuma," with a total of $49 million. Fine movie but not exactly a pace car.

More analysis from Box Office Mojo and Leonard Klady.