It's January at the movies. How can you tell it's January at the movies? There's crap all over the place, including at the top of the box office. But Stomp the Yard? Yup, this photocopy of a dozen other films earned $22 million this weekend. Never mind that only 26 percent of film critics at Rotten Tomatoes saw even a little bit of stuff that made it recommendable -- like the one critic who rated it Fresh yet nevertheless called it "undeniably silly." The remaining 74 percent, the Rotten reviews, sound more like this:

"A rip-off of a bunch of beat-up, banal, and intellectually empty cliches."

"Just when you think Stomp the Yard has used every cliché in the book, it pulls another one out of its Blockbuster rental bag of tricks."

"These kids are on the fast track to becoming Kevin Federline." (Now that's just mean ....)

And my favorite, from Brian Orndorf at OhmyNews.com:

"We have drugs, gangs, guns, and rock n' roll, but dancing is a form of street toughness? What's next, to-the-death tickle matches?"

Numbers 2 and 3 this weekend at the box office looked a lot like the past month has looked: Night at the Museum earned another $17.1 million this weekend, landing it in second place. (Eerily, Laremy predicted it would take $17.4 million, though he did see it in the No. 1 spot.) This flick is on track to crack $200 million next weekend, which is simply outrageous -- yeah, the dino skeleton running around the museum is awesome, but the sitcom antics are the kind of thing we should be stopping in their tracks, not encouraging with our moviegoing dollars. At least The Pursuit of Happyness -- at No. 3 with a take of $9.1 million -- is more worthy of our dollars. It features much the same father-son dynamic as Museum, but it's far more heartfelt.

The mystery I noted on Friday has been solved: Miss Potter did not go wide this weekend -- it "expanded" to only three more theaters, bringing its total screen count to (drum roll, please) 29. But its business was up more than 33 percent. Not bad for the cute little bunny movie. [my review]

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