Any signs of summer-movie fatigue that set in after Evan Almighty's tepid showing were wiped away at this weekend's box office, which found room for several big successes at once. The winner by a rodent's hair was Pixar's Ratatouille with $47.2 million, which obliterated earlier worries that an animated film with a tough-to-pronounce title, a rat as a hero, and a setting in rarefied world of French haute cuisine would be a hard sell. Coming in a respectable second—and also overcoming bad buzz over its star's age and its PG-13 rating—Live Free Or Die Hard scooped $33 million for second, but since it opened on Wednesday instead of Friday, the two-day headstart puts it at $48 million overall. The Michael Moore health care documentary Sicko opened in ninth with $4.5 million, but don't let that number fool you—on just 400 screens, the film's robust per-screen-average $10,200 was second only to Ratatouille. The week's only real stinker was Evening, which squeezed into the Top 10 with $3.5 million, but doesn't look capable of overcoming a raft of negative reviews, even with its once-in-a-lifetime cast.
More detailed numbers available at Box Office Mojo.