Silly trumps dumb at the box office

The weekend’s top-10 movies, courtesy of Media by Numbers:

1. Kung Fu Panda –$60 million
2. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan — $40 million
3. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — $22.8 million
4. Sex and the City — $21.3 million
5. The Strangers — $9.3 million
6. Iron Man — $7.5 million
7. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian — $5.5 million
8. What Happens in Vegas — $3.4 million
9. Baby Mama — $780,000
10. Made of Honor — $775,000

The openings for both the animated “Kung Fu Panda” and Adam Sandler’s “Zohan” were fairly strong. In fact, according to projections, both films came in with $10 million more than the analysts were predicting.

And what made DreamWorks’ “Panda” even more impressive is that much of its weekend haul came from discounted children’s tickets. That bodes well for Disney/Pixar’s “WALL*E,” which is being released June 27.

Also, eight of the top-10 films were rated either PG-13 or even “tamer.” Which would suggest there’s both an audience and an appetite for more family-friendly entertainment right now.