The inevitable Jim Carrey comeback received a major boost this weekend as Dumb And Dumber To rode a wave of fart jokes to the No. 1 spot with $38 million. This was despite terrible reviews like the one from The A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd, but critical approval was probably the last thing on the minds of an audience that skewed 55 percent male and 57 percent over the age of 25 in search of a brainless nostalgia fix.
Rounding out the top three were holdovers Big Hero 6, which stayed strong with $36 million, and Interstellar, which pulled in $29.2 million, both standing in support of science and helpful robots in the face of proud stupidity despite both dropping off about a third from last week. Meanwhile, all the women who were not seeing Dumb And Dumber To were helping boost music-industry melodrama Beyond The Lights to a distant No. 4 with $6.5 million, the weakest opening so far for director Gina Prince-Bythewood despite generally strong reviews.
Gone Girl remains strong at No. 5, pulling in $4.6 million in its seventh week in theaters, putting it on track to earn north of $170 million in theaters as one of the big success stories of the season. Fellow prestige pics Birdman and Whiplash are both struggling to take off, however, with Birdman only seeing marginal gains after expanding to 857 theaters and Whiplash pulling in less than $1 million over the weekend after expanding from 88 to 419 theaters.
Two new specialty box office openings this weekend, Rosewater and Saving Christmas, were neck and neck with $1.2 million and $1.0 million, respectively, presumably from completely different—and intensely loyal—audiences devoted to the ideology espoused by their respective directors. Rosewater came out the winner on a per-theater basis, however, earning $3,235 per screen to Saving Christmas’ $2,468, showing a clear bias towards films that take place in interrogation rooms over films that take place in parked cars.