"Knocked Up" is uproarious. Line for line, minute to minute, writer-director Judd Apatow's latest effort is more explosively funny, more frequently, than nearly any other major studio release in recent memory.

Indeed, even more than the filmmaker's smash-hit sleeper "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," his new pic is bound to generate repeat business among ticketbuyers who'll want to savor certain scenes and situations again and again, if only to memorize punchlines worth sharing with buddies. Currently set for a June 1 release, this hugely commercial comedy likely will remain in megaplexes throughout the summer and, possibly, into the fall.

Dare we allow ourselves to harbor a crazy hope that Knocked Up might one day replenish some of the laughter-enabling neurons so cruelly destroyed by the recent, latex-heavy work of pandering mirth-killers like Brian Robbins? After barely surviving the soul-darkening ordeal of handsy studios unapologetically molesting our inner, comedy-loving child with images of a leather-swaddled John Travolta being struck in the chest with a pigeon while atop a Harley, we're just not sure if we're ready to trust again.

• Knocked Up [Variety]

[Original ad: Digital Variety]

• Hollywood Moviemaking 101: Fuck The Critics, Give The People The Shit They Crave [Defamer]

"You can't review 'Norbit' like you're reviewing 'The Departed.' What are you going to talk about, subtleties in performance?" asked Robbins, who now follows Murphy's advice and doesn't read the reviews of the movies on which he's involved. "Eddie Murphy plays three amazingly different characters brilliantly. How could you not praise that? No offense to Alan Arkin (who beat Murphy for the supporting actor Oscar), but he couldn't do what Eddie did in 'Norbit.' "

In Arkin's defense, his Oscar-winning performance was hampered by a directing team who lack Robbins' unequaled populist savvy; had Arkin convinced them to stop pandering to the Academy by insisting that each character be portrayed by a different actor, he probably would have proven a Murphy-level ability to portray Little Miss Sunshine's cartoonishly dysfunctional family all by himself, a performance that would've included a movie-defining moment in which he horrifies a repressed pagaent crowd by seducitvely removing all of his clothes to the strains of "Super Freak."

• Producer makes millions by defying film critics [CNN.com]

(Also: SANJAYA 4-EVER, motherfuckers!)

1. Wild Hogs—$38 million
Buena Vista's marketing department really should have trusted John Travolta's instincts earlier in the campaign for Wild Hogs. A senior VP, relieved by Hogs' big opening, admitted to Box Office Mojo that "the tracking services had us at best in the mid-$20 million range." Had Travolta's groundbreaking idea to go on daytime talk shows to reenact some of the poignant scenes in which its disaffected protagonists finally throw off the shackles of their dishonest, suburban breeder lives and unleash the leather-daddy freaks within been implemented weeks ago, the movie might have cleared the $50 million barrier.

2. Zodiac—$13.1 million
As he reviews Zodiac's box office returns this morning, notoriously delicate thespian Jake Gyllenhaal is fighting back the tears threatening to erupt from his singularly dreamy eyes; during his darkest moments on David Fincher's sensitive-actor-pummeling shoot, he'd told himself that the pain of watching scores of takes wiped out by a single press of the director's delete key would all be worth it when the film opened at $20 million. With this middling debut in the low teens, Gyllenhaal can't help but feel that all of his suffering was for naught.

3. Ghost Rider—$11.5 million
Still pumped by Ghost Rider's success, Nicolas Cage has instructed his agents that he'll only consider material that will allow him to light his head on fire while doing an extended Elvis impression. This, of course, temporarily limits his projects to Rider sequels or sensationalist biopics focusing on the drug-abusing misadventures of The King's troubled, final days.

4. Bridge to Terabithia—$8.587 million
We officially apologize for never having read Bridge to Terabithia as a child. But we have a good excuse: We were raised in a cult based entirely on the teachings of The Chronicles of Narnia's messianic Lion (some refer to it as "Catholic school"), a stifling environment where no other children's literature was allowed.

8. Black Snake Moan—$4.016 million
To celebrate Moan's eighth place finish (really, that's not so bad for a movie about Sam Jackson chaining a white chick to a radiator), enjoy these videos of Christina Ricci's fine nude work in the film.

• March 2-4, 2007 Studio Estimates [Box Office Mojo]