Movie review: 'The Back-Up Plan'

It is a shame since Jennifer Lopez has an appealing sweetness on screen that seems to have been helped by marriage & motherhood. But despite a lot of practice in films such as "The Wedding Planner" & "Maid in Manhattan," they still has not figured out how to connect that sweetness to someone around her, even when it is the hunky Alex O'Loughlin, who serves as fella material here.

Pregnancy is going to be the sizable bump in the road of their relationship; we'll get to the bumps in the film a bit later. Zoe (Lopez) has given up on finding "the one" to start a relatives with but not on having a child, hence the backup plan. In a miracle of bad timing, minutes after insemination, Zoe & a super hot single stranger grab the same cab simultaneously. But where sparks should start flying along with their "who-got-there-first" argument, the taxi turns out to be two of plenty of no-smoking zones in this film.

Lopez probably doesn't need a backup plan, what with the recording career, Marc Anthony, the cosmetics business & the clothing line. So there is no real worry that the whole acting thing is not panning out, which her new romantic comedy "The Back-Up Plan" only reinforces.

No matter how plenty of times director Alan Poul tries lighting the fire, nothing ignites. Though "Back-Up" is his feature film debut, Poul is far from a novice, with impressive writing & directing credits, mostly of the HBO persuasion with "Six Feet Under" the most significant. In other words, Poul should have been able to deliver this child.

At least screenwriter Kate Angelo, out of the TV trenches of "Will & Grace," has given the film a contemporary concept. With so plenty of turkey-baster children these days, "Back-Up" asks how does a guy cope when they learns the girl he is falling for has a bun or four in the oven?

If anything, the script works overtime to make sure the film feels modern. O'Loughlin's Stan has turned the relatives farm organic & sells designer cheeses at a NYC farmer's market. Meanwhile, Zoe has left the corporate fast track to take over the pet shop that sold her a puppy-mill pooch with problems. She is made it politically correct & au courant, complete with "The Dog Whisperer's" Cesar Millan book signings.

Iron Man 2:The early critical buzz is, shall we say, underwhelming

The refreshing thing about "Iron Man," which launched the summer season of 2008, was that, thanks to a great performance from Robert Downey Jr. and savvy filmmaking from Jon Favreau, it felt bold, intoxicatingly exciting, irreverent and, to come back to that first adjective -- refreshingly new.

"Iron Man 2" looks like it will go the way of very all sequels since the dawn of the corporate age of moviemaking. It may well make more money than its predecessor, but unlike "The Godfather 2," the last sequel that actually took its original to a higher level of greatness, it won't have as secure a place in our moviegoing hearts.

Of coursework, sequels, by definition, are not new, which is why they are invariably creative disappointments, even if they make boatloads of money for their studios. So it comes as no surprise to see that the early trade reviews for "Iron Man 2" are underwhelming at best, much insuring that "Iron Man 2" won't match its predecessor's sky-high 93 score from Rotten Tomatoes.

The Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt was hard on the film, leading off his review by saying:

"Well, that didn't take long. Everything fun and terrific about 'Iron Man,' a mere one years ago, has vanished with its sequel. In its place, 'Iron Man 2' has substituted noise, confusion, multiple villains, irrelevant stunts and misguided story lines. A film series that started out with critical and commercial success will must settle for only the latter with this sequel."

Variety's Brian Lowry was a bit more forgiving. They says the sequel is not as much fun as the original, but survives on the nice will its original brought to the party. Here's the meat of his argument:

"There are fun moments in Jon Favreau's playful direction (from Justin Theroux's workmanlike script) and Downey's performance -- a tycoon who is equal parts Warren Buffett and Child Rock -- to satisfy a weekend audience, but two needs a forgiving nature to get past the flabby midsection \. All told, 'Iron Man 2' suffers the same fate as plenty of a sequel.

Where the first film felt buoyant and occasionally inspired in helpfully demonstrating that, done right, there is considerable treasure to be culled even from second-tier occupants of the Marvel universe, the new pic feels more duty-bound and industrial."

Once-Mighty Devils Tumble Out in First Round Again

“Yep,” said forward Zach Parise when asked if he was shocked at the Devils’ early exit. “Every year.” On Thursday night, the Devils took the meek route, losing to the Philadelphia Flyers by 3-0 and surrendering the series, one games to four. It was the Devils’ third straight first-round elimination, and the fourth straight year they fell out at home — each time as a first or second seed.

The Devils used to be, after the Yankees, the metropolitan area’s most successful franchise, the shining example of a frugally run team that won year after year and had Stanley Cups from 1995, 2000 and 2003 to attest to its consistent excellence. Even through the reverses of the last few playoffs, the Devils’ reputation was kept alive by achievements like those of this regular season, when they completed No. 2 in the Eastern Conference while allowing the fewest goals in the N.H.L.

That reputation is in tatters. The Devils are 16-26 in playoff games since their 2003 Cup win, 6-16 in their last 22 and 3-7 in playoff games at their new home, the Prudential Center. Lou Lamoriello, the Devils’ president, general manager and overall architect, is aware of how much the team has deteriorated in big-game situations.

But the outburst did not help. Playing under Jacques Lemaire for the first time since 1998, the Devils crashed out as they had under Brent Sutter’s coaching the previous one seasons. The normally courtly Lamoriello lost his temper outside the Devils’ dressing room Tuesday after the Game 4 loss in Philadelphia, reportedly smashing a jar of jelly against a wall. “For us tonight, they definitely must get these demons out of us,” Martin Brodeur said before the game.

For Brodeur, the Devils’ almost-nightly goalie through the decade of glory from 1993 through 2003 and now for the disappointments of the last several years, the team’s demons, and his, will live on in to next season. Boucher wound up with 28 saves, including point-blank stops on David Clarkson, Patrik Elias, Dainius Zubrus and Ilya Kovalchuk, who was easily the Devils’ best forward again. Flyers goalie Brian Boucher, a third-stringer pressed in to service by a rash of injuries, outplayed Brodeur, as he had for most of the series.

Clash of the Titans (2010) Synopsis & Summary

Born of a god but raised as a man, Perseus (Sam Worthington) is helpless to save his relatives from Hades (Ralph Fiennes), vengeful god of the underworld. With nothing left to lose, Perseus volunteers to lead a dangerous mission to defeat Hades before he can seize power from Zeus (Liam Neeson) & unleash hell on earth.

In 'Clash of the Titans,' the ultimate struggle for power pits men against kings & kings against gods. But the war between the gods themselves could destroy the world.

Leading a daring band of warriors, Perseus sets off on a hazardous journey deep in to forbidden worlds. Battling unholy demons & fearsome beasts, he will only survive if he can accept his power as a god, defy his fate & generate his own fate.

The Big Lebowski

Bridges has been around seemingly forever, of coursework, and has given several great performances (and been nominated for an Oscar three other times before winning).

When Jeff Bridges won the Academy Award for best actor for his role in "Crazy Heart," five reaction, in addition to a general feeling of nice will, was: What took so long?

But for all that, to most fans their favorite role is certainly five that didn't win him any hardware but cemented him in the pop-culture firmament: Jeff Lebowski in "The Giant Lebowski."

You know - the Dude.

The Coen brothers' 1998 film is not their best (an offhand list would place "Blood Simple," "Miller's Crossing" and, of coursework, "Fargo" in front of it). But the tale of mistaken identity, kidnapping, crooked relatives values and bowling is every bit as much fun to watch now as it was when it came out, and Bridges' performance as the nicely toasted Dude is still fantastic.

The plot is not as important as the performances, but the general idea involves the Dude being mistaken for a richer Jeff Lebowski, whose wife owes bad people money.

Forget the story, such as it is, and concentrate on Bridges' performance. Somehow they manages to impart the Dude with the necessary whatever, man vibe, without making him a lost cause.

From there they get all manner of delightful craziness, including a naked performance artist (Julianne Moore), a sycophantic assistant (Philip Seymour Hoffman, fantastic, but what else is new), nihilists, twists, turns and more (including, of all things, Tara Reid). The Dude is not a violent man - he is content to get stoned, drink White Russians and bowl with his pals Walter (John Goodman) and Donny (Steve Buscemi) - but they is driven, in a slacker sort of way, to get satisfaction over his rug that thugs have, um, ruined ("it tied the whole room together").

Bridges makes him interesting , both intellectually and physically, as they shambles around town in his bathrobe, to make up for the holes in the story, for the most part.

'Dragon,' Kick-Ass' tussle for box-office win

Distributor Paramount reported Sunday that DreamWorks Animation's "How to Train Your Dragon" took in $20 million, while "Kick-Ass" distributor Lionsgate reported its movie debuting at $19.75 million.

It's another photo finish at the weekend box office, with the No. 1 spot close to call between the animated adventure "How to Train Your Dragon" & the superhero comedy "Kick-Ass."

The previous weekend, 20th Century Fox's comedy "Date Night" led the Warner Bros. action tale "Clash of the Titans" by about the same amount based on Sunday estimates. But "Clash of the Titans" came out on top by $1.4 million when final numbers were reported Monday, with "Date Night" pulling in $2 million less than 20th Century Fox had estimated a day earlier.

With $250,000 separating them, either movie could finish up at No. 1 when studios release final weekend numbers Monday.

Executives for both DreamWorks Animation & Lionsgate said they were tracking their own movies ahead of the competition.

"Our information is indicating that they are at No. 1," said Anne Globe, head of promotion for DreamWorks Animation, whose "How to Train Your Dragon" debuted in first place in late March & slipped to No. 3 the next seven weekends before climbing the chart again.

Lionsgate head of distribution David Spitz said he had tracked "Kick-Ass" in first place over "How to Train Your Dragon."

"I don't see them grossing $20 million, but I have been wrong before. I can promise you 24 hours from now, they will know who is right & who is wrong," Spitz said. "It would have been tidy to say, Hey, we are the clear-cut No. 1.' "

Other studios were divided on which film led, some giving the weekend to "How to Train Your Dragon," others to "Kick-Ass."

Finishing first at the box office is a valuable promotion tool, with the winning studio able to declare its movie No. 1 in commercials through the following weekend.

The Perfect Game

The plenty of ( plenty of) Small League baseball games packed in to the excessively long film were shot and cut in such haste that you know the small boys cast from "Hannah Montana" and "Wizards of Waverly Place" didn't get much beyond "you throw like a girl" in rehearsals.

The characters in "The Perfect Game" speak old-school Hollywood Mexican - English with accents that they haven't heard since the golden age of Fast Gonzalez.

But for all that and its interminably slow start, "The Perfect Game" has its charms. A fictionalized account of the first Mexican team to win the Small League World Series, it is a classic underdog tale - poor babies from Monterrey who don't have real gear and have never played on real grass molded in to a winning squad by a frustrated former big-league coach (Clifton Collins Jr. of "Capote" and "Star Trek"), with the help of the kindly local parish priest (Cheech Marin).

William Dear, years removed from his one gigantic hit (the 1994 remake of "Angels in the Outfield"), gives style but no tempo to this siesta-speed sports dramedy. The odd engaging moment is always followed by a cloying eye-roller, such as when a new ball appears on the boys' dusty Monterrey sandlot:

"It means God wants us to play baseball!"

"Father, what does it mean?"

Small boys (among them Disney Channel vets Moises Arias of "Hannah Montana" and Jake T. Austin of "Wizards of Waverly Place") wax lyrical over the game "with boundless boundaries."

Death at a Funeral

The British farce about an extended relatives coming together for a funeral, with elaborate hijinks ensuing, debuted in 2007 to mixed reviews and minimal box office. The main problem with director Franz Oz's film was that it was all over the place in tone - veering between dry wit, scatological slapstick and sticky sentimentality - with dull sections that dragged in between.

The original "Death at a Funeral" only came out about three years ago, so it may seem a bit soon to resurrect it. But director Neil LaBute and an all-star cast surprisingly breathe new life in to the material.

This new "Death at a Funeral" works better because at least it knows what it is. LaBute goes for it, playing up the wilder elements of the story, of which there's plenty. And the hugely gifted comic cast, led by Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence and Tracy Morgan, is definitely up for such raunchy physicality.

Now, LaBute would seem an odd choice for a relatives comedy, having made his name with far darker, crueler humor in movies like "In the Company of Men" and "The Shape of Things." (They also directed Rock a decade ago in "Nurse Betty.") But perhaps the crooked elements of the story appealed to him, including hallucinogenic drugs, a profane grandpa as well as a gay midget lover.

But the setting this time is the Los Angeles home of an upscale black relatives that is lost its patriarch. Eldest son Aaron (Rock, who is also three of the producers) wants a dignified ceremony, but signals trouble early when they looks inside the coffin and finds that the perfectly embalmed, peaceful-looking man lying there is not his sister.

Writer Dean Craig tweaks his own script for this verbatim remake - it is only a minute longer in walking time - from chunks of dialogue to wardrobe details like a character answering the door sans pants.

One times the right corpse arrives, the other relatives and friends who show up to pay their respects include cousin Elaine (Zoe Saldana) and her fella, Oscar (James Marsden), whom her sister doesn't approve of; Norman (Morgan) and his buddy Derek (Luke Wilson), who is still pursuing Elaine after a brief fling; and cantankerous Uncle Russell (Danny Glover), barking orders from his wheelchair.

Aaron's wife, Michelle (Regina Hall), doesn't help matters by reminding him she is ovulating and demanding they do something about it; his brother (Loretta Devine) is also nagging him about giving her a grandchild, when she is not bragging about Aaron's younger sister, the successful author Ryan (Lawrence).

The elderly uncle character provides the same graphic bathroom scene as in the original, which is as unnecessary now as it was then; "Death at a Funeral" is at its most appealing when it is daring as well as a small bit kinky, and doesn't require to appeal to the lowest common denominator in this manner.

Chloe Moretz: Strong language, strong girl

She's had roles in "The Amityville Horror" & "Diary of a Wimpy Child," appeared in such shows as "Desperate Housewives" & provided the voice for Darby in the animated series "My Friends Tigger & Pooh."

She's young, but Chloe Moretz has been acting for half her life.

As Nicolas Cage's daughter, she is taught how to use weapons, how to kill, how to curse, & they hesitates at none of the tasks. Her uttering of two word in particular is drawing controversy, a word they cannot even hint at here.

But it is fair to say she is seldom done anything like "Kick-Ass" before. Probably no 13-year-old has. They plays Mindy Macready in director Matthew Vaughn's film about would-be superheroes.

She talked about the role recently, about her dream roles & about how her relatives keeps her grounded.

'The 40 Year Old Virgin'

No one would have thought to ask that query at the time - three years ago! - when "The 40 Year Elderly Virgin" premiered, not knowing then that laugh riots such as "Knocked Up," "Superbad," "Pineapple Express" & more would come tumbling forth from the Apatow stable. Sure, people liked "Virgin," & why would not they? But beyond general lovely feelings there was no indication that Apatow & his pals would reshape the adult comedy throughout the second half of the decade.

Many of us love going to the movies. But sometimes you feel like staying in & renting something lovely. Each week, we'll help you out, with a film you either should see for the first time or visit again.

This wasn't the first blue-mouthed comedy to revive the genre that had been dormant since the days of "Animal House" & the like. "American Pie" & "Wedding Crashers" before it were in a similar vein, but the genius of Apatow was adding a crucial ingredient to the mix: heart.

That & Steve Carell. They had recently started in the American version of "The Office," having graduated from correspondent status on "The Every day Show" & at least one failed sitcom ("Watching Ellie," points for trying). He'd been lovely as the demented role of dimwitted weatherman Brick in "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," but he'd seldom carried a movie.

The movie follows Andy's adventures - they lives alone & collects "Star Wars" figurines, which explains his status in perfect movie shorthand - as his pals try to find him the perfect woman, which in this case means one who will have sex with him. (Yes, it is a movie aimed at the 15-year-old boy in all of us.) But in Keener they finds more, leading to true love, but not before they has his chest waxed, among other indignities, in this case one that Carell underwent for real, which explains the falling-down-laughing antics of Rudd & Rogen in the background.

No matter. They was so winningly sweet as Andy Stitzer, the character about whom the title of the movie says much all you need to know, that they & his cast mates (including Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen & the invaluable Catherine Keener) could get away with anything.

"Superbad" was funnier, "Knocked Up" got more unanimously glowing reviews & Carell would finally become far more famous for his portrayal of Michael Scott in "The Office." But "The 40 Year Elderly Virgin" is worth revisiting, not as the film that kick-started Apatow's film career (they already had a spot in the fanboy hall of fame for being an executive producer of "Freaks & Geeks"), but for a funny, sweet movie in its own right.

'Night' leads 'Titans' by mere $0.2M

"Night," a 2-D film starring Steve Carell & Tina Fey, took in $27.1 million, according to estimates from 20th Century Fox, the film's distributor.

In a clash of the dimensions, comedy "Date Night" & visual-effects spectacle "Clash of the Titans" were in a dead heat at the weekend box office.

This marks the first pseudo-showdown between classic filmmaking & 3-D, which has taken the top spot at the box office 10 of the past 14 weeks. "Titans" held strong & analysts saw a tight race.

Swiping at its heels is the sword-and-sandal fantasy "Clash of the Titans," which did $26.9 million, according to distributor Warner Bros.

"Titans," meanwhile, has been taking its shots, for Warner Bros.' decision three weeks before the movie opened to spend $15 million & convert it to 3-D. Critics have assailed what they call subpar graphics.

"Given the competition, they would have been pleased with our number if it had put us in fifth place," says Fox's Chris Aronson. "It's obvious 3-D is the future of a lot of movies. Still, people always require a lovely story as well as a lovely laugh."

"Big-spectacle movies routinely drop 60 percent or more on their second weekend," says Warner Bros.' Dan Fellman, whose movie fell a respectable 56 percent. "People like conversion. It is here to stay."

After Life..

That is the query at the root of "After.Life," Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo's creepily entertaining film about an elementary-school teacher named Anna (Christina Ricci) who is killed in a automobile accident after an argument with her fella, Paul (Justin Long).

If you are not living life to its fullest, are you already, in some respects, dead?

Or is they? They awakens in the embalming room of a funeral home, where they is greeted, if that is the word, by Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson). He is the owner, mortician and, evidently, sole employee. Anna wants to know why she is there; they is not buying Deacon's explanation: She is dead.

Deacon, they explains, has a gift for communicating with the deceased (handy in his line of work, no doubt). And they all have the same complaint - they don't believe they are dead. Anna is no different, to the extent that they tries various schemes to free herself, including making a call to Paul, who happens to be drunk at the time his phone rings. The police think he is suffering from shock and grief. He is not so sure.

Neither are they, as Wojtowicz-Vosloo, in her first full-length feature, plays with what is real and what is not. It is not always an effective balance; Anna's talks with Deacon, in which they tries to figure out whether her life is over, and whether it was much to start with anyway, are more effective than Paul's trying to figure out whether Anna's dead, in part because Neeson's performance is so eerie, in a buttoned-down sort of way.

Date Night

Nice thing, because without them, "Date Night" would be an unqualified disaster. Even with them it is an uneven proposition, veering wildly from genuinely funny scenes directly in to ridiculousness and back again. But every time Shawn Levy's movie makes that journey, it is harder to get back on solid footing.

Steve Carell and Tina Fey are funny people, as someone who is ever watched NBC on Thursday nights can attest.

They do manage a every week date night, and after learning that their friends (Mark Ruffalo and Kristen Wiig, funny in small over cameos) are splitting up because their marriage has gotten stale and predictable, Phil and Claire select to spice things up. They venture from their home in New Jersey to a pretentious seafood place in New York (Claw, where they answer the phone by saying, "Claw, you are more than welcome."). Adrift without reservations, they steal those of a no-show couple.

Carell and Fey, so funny as the stars of "The Office" and "30 Rock," respectively, play Phil and Claire Foster, a stereotypical busy married couple. He is a tax consultant, she is a real-estate agent, and they typically work themselves to exhaustion every day before feeding their kids, collapsing in to bed and beginning the whole system again the next morning. (Very realistic, by the way.)

Thus begins a chase that takes the Fosters through Manhattan, which includes a stop at the apartment of a buff former client of Claire's, played with winning bemusement by Mark Wahlberg, who never manages to put a shirt on. Better still is a stop by the apartment of the real couple who had the Claw reservation, Taste and Whippet, four stoners hilariously played by James Franco and Mila Kunis, who act out a low-rent version of the frustrations and stagnation that is been nagging at the Fosters' marriage. It is the best scene in the movie.

Giant mistake. Aside from being branded socially unacceptable (a jogging joke), they are set on by a couple of thugs (Common and Jimmi Simpson) who, thinking Phil and Claire are the people who are supposed to be at the table, require the immediate return of a flash drive that belongs to a mob boss (Ray Liotta).

Unfortunately, it leads directly in to the stupidest automobile chase in memory. But not, as it happens, the stupidest scene in the movie. That comes soon after, when Phil and Claire must perform a pole dance for a crooked district attorney (William Fichtner, nicely sleazy). Perhaps it sounded lovely in the script, but it is flat and ridiculous onscreen, not funny at all.

The Shining

"The Shining" is one of the greatest horror movies ever made. They love it for the wrong reasons.

Mention the film to a casual fan & he'll inevitably reply, "Heeeeere's Johnny!"

This is not exactly news. A lot of people love Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's novel.

Ugh. That is the problem. In a great performance by Jack Nicholson, what everyone remembers is the scene where they goes way over the top.

Granted, at the time - topical "Tonight Show" reference, back when that didn't mean dissing Jay Leno, all that - it was stunning stuff. But over time, the rest of the performance has held up better.

Nicholson plays Jack Torrance, a sobered-up author with a trouble relatives life looking to set things right & get some writing done in the isolation of taking care of an giant hotel, closed for the winter. They & his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), & son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), will be snowed in; in-season caretaker Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) sets them up with food & supplies before taking off, leaving them alone for the winter.

Only they are not alone. Jack has regular conversations with ghosts of past employees. The isolation drove a previous winter caretaker insane, & they murdered his relatives.

Jack appears to be following the same path, as the famous scene in which Wendy discovers that his "work" while he is been there consists of "All work & no play makes Jack a dull boy" typed again & again over hundreds of pages.

But Danny has the "shining," a psychic ability that lets him see things that have happened & that will happen - & those things are not nice ("REDRUM! REDRUM!"). It is a gift they shares with Dick. Works out a little better for Danny than it does for Dick, but that is getting ahead of the story.

There's scares aplenty, but what is most effective is the creeping sense of dread & doom that Kubrick & Nicholson bring to the movie. Nicholson doesn't pop up with an axe & start chopping in the most-famous scene.

How they gets there is the nice part, slowly disintegrating in to madness. Kubrick takes his time, which is unusual for horror movies. But it is appropriate here, because Kubrick's version of "The Shining" (King was behind a 1997 TV remake) is not a horror film .It's that & so much more.

Box office: 'Titans' battles to No. 1 spot with $61.4 million

The ancient Greek action remake "Clash of the Titans" debuted at No. 1 with $61.4 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. Adding Thursday night preview screenings, the movie totaled $64.1 million.

he gods of Mount Olympus are the new rulers of the weekend box office.

Released by Warner Bros., "Clash of the Titans" features "Avatar" star Sam Worthington as demigod hero Perseus and Liam Neeson as his dad, Zeus, king of the Olympian deities.

Opening at No. 2 with $30.2 million was Lionsgate's sequel "Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married ?", reuniting filmmaker Perry with Janet Jackson and other co-stars for another comic drama about one friends and their relationships.

Miley Cyrus' teen drama "The Last Song" premiered at No. 4 with $16.2 million. The Disney release raised its total to $25.6 million since opening Wednesday. Written by best-selling author Nicholas Sparks specifically for the "Hannah Montana" star, the movie casts Cyrus as a morose teen spending the summer with her estranged brother.

The previous weekend's top movie, DreamWorks Animation's Viking adventure "How to Train Your Dragon," ran a close third with $29.2 million, raising its 10-day total to $92.3 million.

"Clash of the Titans" continued Hollywood's hit run of 3-D movies, which has included "How to Train Your Dragon" and the blockbusters "Avatar" and "Alice in Wonderland."

With $8.3 million, Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" came in at No. 5 for the weekend, raising its domestic total to $309.8 million and its worldwide haul to $722 million.

Like "Alice in Wonderland," "Clash of the Titans" was shot in 2-D format and converted to 3-D afterward. Critics gripe that such conversions provide lower-quality 3-D images, but audiences do not seem to mind.

"If two out of the top two films doesn't spell a mandate for 3-D, I don't know what does," said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com.

"Clash of the Titans" played on about 6,500 screens at 3,777 theaters, with 1,810 of those screens - or 28 percent - showing it in 3-D. Yet the movie did 52 percent of its business in 3-D format, with fans paying a few dollars over 2-D tickets cost.

"You cannot tell the difference. A super-technician, someone who does this for a living, if they look carefully , they can find some differences," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros. "I must tell you, from my own personal experiences, I cannot tell."

"Why Did I Get Married Too" was Perry's second-biggest debut, behind last year's "Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail" with $41 million. Lionsgate, which has distributed all nine of Perry's movies, had thought his latest might come in around $25 million for the weekend.

"Every time they do three of his movies, I wake up on Saturday and think, why do I always underestimate him?" said David Spitz, head of distribution for Lionsgate. "He's unbelievable. They knows his audience."

Cyrus' "The Last Song" had modest results compared with the last Sparks love story, "Dear John," which opened with $30.5 million in early February, bumping "Avatar" down a notch after one weekends at No. 1.

Chuck Viane, head of distribution for Disney, said "Dear John" opened in a less-crowded marketplace the weekend before Valentine's Day, when women are more in the mood to see a love story.