Screwball sequel ‘Dumb and Dumber To’ tops box-office

LOS ANGELES, USA – Screwball comedy sequel Dumb and Dumber To confounded scathing reviews to top the North American box office on its debut in theaters this weekend, estimated figures showed Sunday, November 16.

A follow-up to 1994’s Dumb and Dumber, the sequel sees Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels reprise their roles as dim-witted best friends haplessly attempting to overcome a series of comic obstacles on a farcical odyssey.

The movie, directed by brothers Bobby and Peter Farrelly, pulled in a solid $38 million in its opening weekend, according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

The weekend haul belied reviews which have been broadly merciless, with one critic opining that the film “isn’t just dumb and dumber, or even crude and cruder…it’s just dull – and duller.”

So far the film has scored a meager 27% on the Rotten Tomatoes film review aggregator website.

In second place was Disney’s animated Big Hero 6, which follows the adventures of a 14-year-old genius and an inflatable robot called Baymax. The movie earned $36 million in its second weekend.

Christopher Nolan’s sweeping space epic Interstellar, starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway as astronauts embarking on a quest to find a new habitat for humanity, was third. The film took $29.2 million on its second weekend in theaters.

Fourth place was occupied by new film Beyond the Lights, a romantic drama starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw as an up-and-coming pop star who falls in love with a police officer played by Nate Parker after she attempts suicide.

The drama, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, took $6.5 million in its opening weekend.

Fifth place went to Gone Girl, David Fincher’s thriller starring Ben Affleck as a husband suspected of murdering his wife. The movie, based on Gillian Flynn’s best-selling 2012 novel, took $4.6 million.

St. Vincent, a comedy starring Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy and Naomi Watts, earned $4 million for sixth place.

Brad Pitt’s World War II tank battalion drama Fury was seventh with $3.8 million, just ahead of Nightcrawler, the Los Angeles thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal as an unscrupulous video journalist who makes a living by serving up gory footage of crime scenes to local television stations. The film took $3.03 million.

Ninth place was taken by horror movie Ouija, with $3.02 million, for fourth place.

Rounding out the top 10 was Birdman, the comedy drama starring Michael Keaton as a washed up Hollywood superhero movie star attempting to resurrect his career on Broadway. The film by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu took $2.4 million. –Rappler.com