1) 17 Again — $24.1 million
Oh man does everyone love Zac Efron. Not only did the gooey film about Chandler from Friends turning back the clock and becoming basketball star Troy Bolton handily win the top box office spot this beautiful spring weekend, but it earned a very good A- CinemaScore from the giddy exiting audience. Excited fans ranged from nine-year-old Vanessa Montez who squealed "I haven't pooped my pants that many times since Delgo!" to forty-two-year-old Dwayne Abernathy who quietly mumbled "it was worth breaking parole for, though it was hard finding a theater seat that was 1,100 feet from any of the children." He fiddled with a crumpled newspaper that he held over his crotch and then walked off toward where he'd parked his bicycle, which had been, unbeknownst to him, mangled and stolen by some local teenagers. Though, Dwayne isn't mad at them. He can't stay mad at them.

2) State of Play — $14.1 million
No one really wants to see adult drama/thrillers anymore. Even if they feature a long-haired Russell Crowe and Helen Mirren sitting sternly behind a desk. But the newspapermen as heroes pic wasn't a disaster by any means, it just wasn't as big a debut as some had hoped. Though it still beat Body of Lies, the other badly-titled Crowe picture that sputtered at the box office in the last six months. For her part Rachel McAdams just figures that if it does better than The Lucky Ones, then everything's all right with her.

4) Hannah Montana: The Movie — $12.7 million
Though losing two thirds of its opening weekend audience, this Oscar favorite is still trotting along quite nicely. Those eager to see the long, awkward father-daughter bolero dance that was rumored to be featured after the end credits were at first disappointed, then elated, then needed to go home when they discovered that waiting for them at the end was, instead, a video of swoony costar Lucas Till doing the choreography from the recent Xanadu musical's finale. An exiting audience member, 42-year-old "Jwayne Dabernathy", was quoted as saying "I haven't pooped my pants that many times since Kitt Kitredge."

5) Crank: High Voltage — $6.5 million
A small mess for Jason Statham, who has scared up surprisingly high box office with his Transporter movies and the original Crank. But this one failed to connect with audiences, who had bigger and better movies to see this weekend. Most of the tickets were purchased by confused meth heads, who wandered over to the cineplex like zombies in Dawn of the Dead, hoping to taste a powerful new batch. One tweeker was heard muttering that he "shit" on "my parole," before he staggered aimlessly into Monsters vs. Aliens and began uncontrollably weeping.

6) Observe & Report — $4.1 million
I think this can now be called a definitive box office failure. The Seth Rogen comedy—he's supposed to be the biggest laff-riot in the world right now!—has only raked in a little pile of leaves worth $18 million in its first two weeks out. Though this might also say something about the dark overtones of the film, what with the date rape controversy and the scary Ray Liotta factor. If only they'd had Zac Efron play a chipper, charming Foot Locker employee or Miley Cyrus and her cowboy boyfriend play a couple getting Glamor Shots together. Then people would have come (and, for some, come) in droves.

You wouldn't know it from watching the commercials playing constantly on TV, but in Observe & Report Ronnie (Seth Rogen) date rapes Brandi (Anna Faris) after taking her out to dinner, and today, bloggers are talking about it. This is how The New York Times review describes the scene, which you can watch in the final 20 seconds of the trailer above:

In another scene [Rogen] forces himself on a makeup-counter saleswoman after a date of heavy drinking and drug use. (Before the scene is over she indicates that she had given her consent.)

In the scene, Brandi has thrown up on herself and appears to be totally unconscious as Ronnie is pumping away on top of her. He stops for a second, and then she murmurs the line that The New York Times says indicates her consent, "Did I tell you to stop, motherfucker?" before passing out again.

Dan Kois writes on New York Magazine's Vulture blog:

The movie doesn't mitigate that sex scene at all. In fact, it makes it even more clear than the trailer does that when Brandi and Ronnie get home from dinner, she's unbelievably trashed on antidepressants and tequila. Not only does she throw up all over the place, she can barely walk - and she certainly can't give any kind of informed consent. She's way too wasted for her yelling at Ronnie to mean anything.

But Kois doesn't get is that it's a dark comedy. People are so disturbed by rape that the fact that Brandi is too out of it to give any kind of consent what makes the scene so hilarious. Anna Faris told New York Magazine, "It's like date rape - that's funny, right?" Seth Rogen agrees in this interview posted by the Washington City Paper. He says:

SETH ROGEN: When we're having sex and she's unconscious like you can literally feel the audience thinking, like, how the fuck are they going to make this okay? Like, what can possibly be said or done that I'm not going to walk out of the movie theater in the next thirty seconds? . . . And then she says, like, the one thing that makes it all okay:
BRANDI: "Why are you stopping, motherfucker?"

Rogen explains that everyone in the theater then lets out a good long chuckle. See, even though she's probably blacked out and has no idea what she's saying, it isn't rape. (And Brandi's kind of a dumb slut anyway.) In the beginning of the trailer, a flasher is exposing himself to women in the mall parking lot and it looks like he's masturbating in front of Brandi. In this interview Anna Faris says:

It is the most traumatic event that's ever happened to her, which is funny because I always imagined that she's seen a bit of male anatomy and it wouldn't normally scare her.

Women who have many sex partners obviously love penis, so they'd welcome a stranger jerking off in front of them on their way to work.

And if you aren't already laughing at the idea of a pervert exposing himself to women and someone getting date raped, Sady points out on her blog Tiger Beatdown (via Shakesville) that the film will be even more entertaining for women with history of sexual assault. Sady writes:

"The incredible frequency of rape and sexual assault in our society means that many, many victims of rape will see [the movie], and the PTSD that often accompanies rape will mean that, for a joke, for some dipshit filmmaker's attempt at being edgy, they are going to experience all of the pain and psychological trauma associated with that experience, they are going to feel that rape all over again, there, in their seats, in the theater, and they are going to pay for the experience, and if they try to talk about what that filmmaker did to them it's probably going to get sidetracked into some conversation about the Sanctity of Art which is invariably given more consideration than their actual lives."

An Auteur of Awkward Strikes Again [The New York Times]
Does Seth Rogen Rape Anna Faris in Observe & Report? [New York Magazine]
Observe and Report's Date Rape Apologism [Washington City Paper]
Um. [Tiger Beatdown]
Quote of the Day [Shakesville]

Obvious as it is, there's always room for amazement watching what a few creative edits, realignments and tweaks can do to a story. And the shorter the piece (a two-and-a-half-minute trailer, for example) the more jarring the impact: Slashing a few dirty jokes here and there has diminished first impressions of Observe from those of a ribald, radical dark comedy of insecurity to more of a mopey, emasculated Rogen dramedy. Sure, it withholds some gags you'd probably want saved for the theater. The downside, naturally, is that who's to say this would get you to the theater if you didn't know better?

Which of course gets us into the nature of what a trailer should or shouldn't do, etc. etc. Debate that one among yourselves (the original, NSFW red-band trailer is below), but at least give Observe and Report some credit going forward: At least there's no Segway.

• 'Observe and Report' [MySpace]

Sure, you've got Anna Faris refining dizzy drunkenness to almost molecular purity and a fearlessly multi-ethnic showcase led by Aziz Anzari's brown-dick rejoinders. That's funny, but Rogen seems to have more substantial motivations than love and duty, and higher ambitions than retail rectitude. "The world needs a fucking hero," he growls, and we believe him, if only because of the existential terror anchoring every gag here. Who'd argue? Keep your $100 million and your script-ownership issues, Paul Blart; violent, cold-blooded, pitch-black revenge is no doubt the future of mall-security cinema. [YouTube]

Slashfilm interviewed actor Ben Best about his experience on Observe and Report, a mall cop comedy starring Liotta and Seth Rogen (directed by Jody Hill, who made The Foot Fist Way). According to Best, Liotta does not take kindly to simple blocking:

One day, we’re lining up a shot, and we’re standing on these courthouse steps, Seth is there, and Jody tells us to move down. And Jody says, ‘Hey Ray [Liotta], why don’t you go here.’ And Jody’s literally talking about the next step down, and Ray’s like ‘…Why?’

Seth and I just look at each other, like ‘Uhhh?’ So, Jody thinks for a second, and goes ‘Why not?’ And Ray goes, ‘Well, I just don’t think my character would stand on this step.’ And Jody just goes ‘Fuck It.’ So, after it’s over, Ray says to me, ‘You know what I think about that?’ And he just goes [makes ginormous fart noise—-an IRL wet fart]. The smell….it was the most disgusting thing ever. He’s crazy in a good way. [laughs]

Crazy, or crazy like a fox? Sure, Liotta's behavior might seem outrageous and out of line, but give the guy a break: he probably just came off an "I" bender that would send a lesser Apatow alum to Cedars Sinai.

[Photo Credit: AP]

• Observe and Report: A Little Story About Ray Liotta [Slashfilm]