Polly comes along and captures USBO

A romantic comedy Along Came Polly, about a man who seldom takes risk and a free-spirited woman, seized the box-office crown along with $27.6 million over the weekend in North America.

The Return Of The King, champ for four weeks in a row, was ousted to fourth place but was still a force to reckon with.

Since Polly cost just about $48 million, it may become profitable in a month.

Like many recent hits, including Cheaper By The Dozen, which were roasted by the critics, Polly was also poorly received. Critics complained its scatological humour was over-stretched. Some thought Ben Stiller played similar roles in There's Something About Mary and Meet The Parents. Others pointed out there was no real chemistry between lead players Stiller and Jennifer Aniston.

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But audiences clearly thought otherwise.

The delightful musical Teacher's Pet, which received good reviews from major publications, was the unpleasant surprise of the weekend, earning a paltry $2.8 million, one of the worst ever openings for a Disney film.

The animated feature, about a talking dog (voiced by Nathan Lane) who passes himself as a schoolboy, was based on a television show from the Disney Channel. It could not find a place among the top 10. But the film, made for a paltry $10 million, may still make money if it has a robust life on DVD and video.

Among the other newcomers, the motorbike drama Torque opened at third position on the box-office chart with a decent $10.2 million. It was followed closely by Big Fish that is showing strong gills in its second week of wide release.

New Zealander Martin Henderson (cast opposite Aishwarya Rai in Gurinder Chadha's Bride And Prejudice) plays one of the leads in Torque with rapper Ice Cube. He plays a biker who is framed for the murder of a gang leader and has to fight hard to save himself from avenging gang members. Besides, the FBI is also after him. Ice Cube plays one of his foes.

While a handful of influential film critics found the film fairly tolerable, others were very angry at it. 'Take it on its own terms,' wrote Roger Ebert in Chicago Sun-Times, 'and you might find it interesting.' But San Francisco Chronicle wrote: 'It's only January, but already we have a strong candidate for the most thunderingly stupid movie of the year.'

At the fourth place, ROTK suffered its mildest decline in five weeks as it came down by 28 per cent and its cume reached $326.8 million.

The Steve Martin hit, Cheaper By The Dozen, that is clearly destined to be the biggest hit of his four decades in the movies, is still going strong. At the fifth position, it grossed $112 million.

The Civil War romantic drama Cold Mountain had the lowest decline (11 per cent) among the top 10. It stands at sixth position, followed by Something's Gotta Give, the Jack Nicholson-Diane Keaton comedy that enters the $100 million club. It is followed by My Baby's Daddy, which had the biggest tumble (by 53 per cent) from the previous week.

Yet another movie to cross the $100 million benchmark over the weekend, The Last Samurai is at the ninth position, followed by the British comedy Calendar Girls which has re-entered the to 10 chart.

The following is the estimated box-office gross in North America, January 16-18

The box office this week: