Everyone's in a magical tizzy over Enchanted's five-day take of $50 million, but I'm not so sure it's as big a deal as all that. I saw that number and I thought, "Hmm, that seems kinda low for such a wonderful movie over such a long holiday weekend. I was expecting a lot more than that." Sure, if you look at movies that had five-day Thanksgiving-weekend openings, Enchanted's was the second-best ever, after Toy Story 2, also from Disney, in 1999. (Interestingly, the next three top Turkey Day openers are also from the Mouse: Unbreakable, A Bug's Life, and 101 Dalmatians.) But if you look at the top three-day Thanksgiving weekends overall -- Friday through Sunday, and counting not just debuting films -- Enchanted and its $35.3 million three-day take is down at No. 6... way down. At No. 1 is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which earned $57.5 million in 2001 in its second weekend, which fell over the holiday. (Nos. 2, 3, and 4 are also all above the $50 million mark.) That's the kind of number I thought we'd see for Enchanted.

So while some box office watchers are touting this past weekend as the end to the recent slump at the multiplex, I'm not so sure. There's a real surprise in the No. 2 slot for the five-day -- the terrible holiday "heart warmer" This Christmas, which earned $27.1 million -- but the rest of the slate looks pretty slack:

No. 3: Beowulf, $23.3 milllion
No. 4: Hitman, $21 million
No. 5: Bee Movie, $16 million
No. 6: Fred Claus, $15.1 million
No. 7: August Rush, $13.3 million
No. 8: The Mist, $13 million

These are five-day numbers, remember. Maybe it's just that the wealth is spread among more movies, but last year over the long Thanksgiving weekend, Happy Feet and Casino Royale, both in their second weeks, earned, respectively, $50.6 million and $44.8 million. Two years ago, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire earned $81.2 million over the five-day.

I'm disappointed, of course, that more people didn't see the sweet fairy tale of August Rush or the riveting horror of The Mist (which is one of the best films of 2007, as far as I'm concerned). But it's the overall ho-humness of the weekend that worries me a little. Yeah, people went to the movies, and a lot of movies did okay. So why does it feel like audiences are abandoning the movies more and more lately?

[Box office numbers via Box Office Mojo.]

MaryAnn Johanson (email me)
reviews, reviews, reviews! at FlickFilosopher.com

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