I can't wait till next week's box-office report so I can see how Pixar's Wall-E holds up with audiences. Early reports struck dire ticket-selling notes for this futuristic tale of a garbage-compacting robot, WALL-E (for Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth class), who was left on Earth to clean up the mess we made of it. Words like gloomy, sorrowful, dystopian and dull filled the air. And yet this groundbreaker in the art of animation swept in with $62.5 million to hit the No. 1 spot. That's puts it behind only The Incredibles ($70.5 million), Finding Nemo ($70.3 million) and Monsters, Inc. ($62.6 million) in the Pixar pantheon of nine consecutive opening-weekend winners. Second place went to the R-rated Wanted, taking in $51.1 million to show that some trash (the sexy, jolting, fun kind like Wanted) also has a place at the multiplex and should be spared being tossed in the dumpster by the G-rated WALL-E. It's quite a weekend when two non-sequels representing the scariest word in Hollywood—originality—can rack up such huge numbers. But here are the questions of the day for those of you've seen WALL-E:

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Look, it's bad enough for the career of Mike Myers that The Love Guru lost the weekend box-office battle to Steve Carell and Get Smart, but look at these numbers: Get Smart took in $39.1 million to Love Guru's $14 million. That's a beating, mister. What makes it worse for Myers is that Guru wasn't even a close second to Smart. Kung Fu Panda, the animated kids flick that won't die, took the No. 2 spot with $21.7 million, amassing $155.6 million in just three weeks. And No. 3 went to The Incredible Hulk with $21.6 million, repping a huge slip of 61percent from its debut. There is some solace there since Ang Lee's Hulk in 2003 dropped 70 percent in its second week. But face it Hulk fanboys, your giant green rage hero is on the wane. At least Guru beat The Happening, which plunged 67 percent to gross $10 million and take the No. 5 spot before hitting the fast track to DVD oblivion. Make no mistake, the story here is Mike Myers. Is the failure of The Love Guru merely a slip or a sign of dire things to come?

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Can we talk? Not about The Incredible Hulk—we all knew that the mean green machine would take the No. One spot at the box office. The big news was The Happening, reviled by critics and preceded by the worst buzz imaginable, ostensibly driven by moviegoers who felt burned by everything M. Night Shyamalan directed after The Sixth Sense in 1999. Me, I got way into Unbreakable, and also liked Signs and a lot of The Village. It was Lady in the Water, two years ago, that drowned Shyamalan in the poison tide of audience and critical backlash. The box-office performance of The Happening was supposed to reflect the bile. Here was a chance for ticketbuyers to stay away in droves as karmic payback for Shyamalan's failure to please with Lady in the Water. And just look what happened:

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It's big news when an animated movie aimed at tykes cuts into Adam Sandler's fan base and whups his ass. That's what happened this weekend when Kung Fu Panda, with Jack Black doing the voice of a roly-poly Chinese bear, took in $60 million from 4,114 theaters, leaving Sandler's You Don't Mess With the Zohan to eat its dust with $40 million from 3,462 theaters. OK, $40 million is nothing to blow hummus at, it's only the fifth Sandler movie to debut at that mark (The Longest Yard is the No. One Sandler opening at $48 million). But who could have guessed that 71 percent of the Panda audience would be over 17 and that 51 percent would be over 25? Also, Panda won much better reviews, 85 percent favorable according to the rottentomatoes Website, as opposed to 35 percent favorable for Zohan, starring Sandler as a Mossad agent who chucks commando work to cut and style hair in New York. Sharp idea for a comedy with a sting—and Sandler is quite good in it— but oh the sloppy execution. Now that Sandler is stuck with a panda's sloppy seconds, it might be time to consider a few questions: Is Sandler talented?

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In one of the few shocks in no-surprises-please Hollywood, Sex and the City unmanned Indiana Jones into the shame of second place. That's $55.7 million for Sex at 3,285 theaters and $46 million for Indy 4 at 4,264 theaters. Sex enjoyed the biggest weekend debut ever for a romantic comedy, doubling the $27.5 million debut of The Devil Wears Prada, and scoring the fifth best debut of all time for an R-rated film. Sex easily topped other R-rated comedies, such as The Wedding Crashers and Knocked Up. Which means Dr. Jones was thoroughly pussywhipped. Instead of giving the ladies their due—what's wrong with a victory for females in a male-dominated summer?—the beancounters keep putting up a biased macho defense:

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Holy bad box office! Chim-Chim the chimp has a right to go bonkers. OK, no one really expected Speed Racer to beat Iron Man, still selling like $50 million worth of platinum in its second week. But to see the brainchild of Andy and Larry Wachowski in a photo finish for second with romcom crap like What Happens in Vegas is just effing depressing. Look, I felt Speed Racer couldn't find the human touch that would make its visual pyrotechnics stick. Even Chim-Chim, who hangs with Speed's younger brother Spritle, mugs way beyond the call of chimp duty. But the Wachowskis are real filmmakers. Watching them, even when they fail (see the conclusion of The Matrix trilogy), is far more edifying an experience than enduring Cameron Diaz shrieking at Ashton Kutcher for two enervating hours. So why did Speed Racer hit the wall? The know-it-alls give these reasons:

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His name is Tyler Perry — that's him above in drag. He's a writer, director and actor. And if you've never heard of him, you better get busy. His plays, videos, books, TV shows and movies have made him a one-man industry. Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns came in at No. 2 at the box office over the weekend, behind the family flick Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who. Dr. Seuss took in $25 million on 4000 screens, while Dr. Perry grabbed $20 million on only half the number of screens. You do the math. Perry, 38, is kicking major ass.

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There he was, Jim Carrey, a $25 million a movie star, sitting in the audience at last week's American Idol results show, in an elephant costume. It was a pandering plug for Carrey's new animated film Horton Hears a Who in which the comic voices the elephant title character created by Dr. Seuss. The movie debuted big at $45 million, making it No. 1 for the week, the best opening so far this year for any movie (driving Cloverfield to second place), and the fifth biggest opening ever for animated film, behind Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, Cars and Ratatouille. No bitching from me. Horton is better than decent family entertainment. What made me sad was seeing Carrey reduced to selling himself out for a Fox movie on a Fox TV show. Carrey's had a tough time of it of late with such flops as The Majestic, Fun With Dick and Jane and—yikes!—The Number 23. But does he deserve this—being forced (I hope) to shill for a kids flick on a massively popular TV show? If I'm being honest, to quote Simon Cowell, it was a pathetic sight. Carrey is a gifted actor who deserved Oscar nominations that never came for The Truman Show, Man on the Moon and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. You could probably think of other examples of primo Carrey. Let's do it, just to wipe way away the bad taste of the Idol debacle.

[Photo: FOX]

The Bank Job (see photo), based on a scandal-tinged heist in London more than three decades ago, opened the weekend with wow reviews and expectations of stealing business from that behemoth, 10,000 B.C. It didn't happen. Grossing a dispiriting $5.7 million against $35.7 milion for 10,000 B.C. and $14 million for College Road Trip, The Bank Job hopped on the express train to Netflix. What happened? There are many theories:

1. Lousy title—could it be more generic?
2. Londoner Jason Statham is a surprisingly forceful screen presence. but he is not a star. The champion diver and model for the clothing brand French Connection became an actor best known for three Guy Ritchie crime films (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Revolver, Snatch) and roles in The Italian Job and two Transporter films. That's second tier all the way. Matt Damon, George Clooney or Johnny Depp, who does a creditable Brit accent, could have made all the difference.

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Box office can kill, people. If the cash isn't percolating, it can kill quicker than Freddy Krueger, the dream invader with claws who put New Line Cinema on the map with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise nearly 25 years ago. I bring up New Line because after forty years, one of the most adventurous studios in play-it-safe Hollywood has just been absorbed into the Warner Bros. mothership as a cost-cutting move. When the high-priced floperoo of The Golden Compass proved that the studio couldn't pull off another Lord of the Rings bonanza without Peter Jackson, the writing was on wall. Now lots of good people are out of work, including founders Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne. My fondest memories of New Line stem back to its beginnings, reviving Reefer Madness, dishing out the dirty fun of John Waters, the dishy horror of The Evil Dead, franchise hits from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Austin Powers. Sure, New Line grinded out its fair share of crap. most recently Snakes On a Plane, Mr. Woodcock, Rendition, Over Her Dead Body and the aforementioned Golden Compass.

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