It turns out that people in the flyover states like movies, too! At least that’ll be the meme running through the blogosphere today as G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra exploded into the No. 1 slot this weekend, grossing an estimated $56.2 million to pace the field. Landing in second was the cooking comedy Julie & Julia, which whipped up an estimated $20.1 million, meaning this could be the third summer in the last four that has seen Meryl Streep open a movie over $20 million. (Before you send Ms. Streep a card, though, keep in mind that when the final numbers are released later today, Julie & Julia might dip below $20 million.) Unfortunately, the weekend’s other wide release, A Perfect Getaway, was anything but: The Honeymoon thriller opened in seventh with just $5.7 million. As we do each Monday, here’s a breakdown of the top five at the box office.

1. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: $56.2 million ($56.2 million total)

Score one for the inner children in all of us. The Rise of Cobra still faces a tough slog on the path to breaking even—with a production and marketing budget nearing $300 million, the film will need to crack that number worldwide to have a chance—but this could have been a whole lot worse. As it stands, Rise of Cobra is the fourth biggest opening ever in the month of August, behind only The Bourne Ultimatum, Rush Hour 2 and Signs. We guess Paramount knew what they were doing after all.

2. Julie & Julia: $20.1 million ($20.1 million total)

Is it sacrilege to call this opening a bit of a disappointment? With The Great Meryl becoming a legitimate box office draw in the last five years, we were expecting something more from Julie & Julia. To wit: Not only is this opening lower than both The Devil Wears Prada ($27.5 million) and Mamma Mia! ($27.7 million), it’s also lower than other female-centric pictures this summer like The Ugly Truth. Nora Ephron’s comedy will definitely have legs—and, more important, it was cheap to produce—but this isn’t the smash we anticipated.

3. G-Force: $9.8 million ($86.1 million total)

With the exception of (500) Days of Summer, which expanded to 817 theaters and grossed 34 percent more than it did last week, G-Force and its 44 percent drop is the proud owner of the lowest decline in the top 10. At $86.1 million total domestically, the talking guinea pig comedy has to rank as one of the more surprising hits of the summer.

4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $8.8 million ($273.8 million total)

Everyone’s favorite boy wizard continues to rake in the cash, as The Half-Blood Prince is now up to an eye-popping $815 million worldwide after just 26 days of release. Domestically, David Yates’ film is now the fourth biggest hit in the franchise and could wind up behind only the first film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, before all is said and done.

5. Funny People: $7.8 million ($40.4 million total)

Last weekend’s No. 1, Funny People, slipped a Bruno-like 65 percent to fall into fifth place, and barely edged out weekend three of The Ugly Truth ($7 million/$69 million total) in the process. At this rate, Judd Apatow’s lengthy dramedy might have a tough time crossing $60 million, meaning it will be the lowest grossing movie of his directorial career by over $40 million. Ouch. We’re guessing next time he’ll stick with a more marketable premise.

Perhaps Judd Apatow is smirking all the way to the bank. Funny People, the hirsute director’s third film, opened in the No. 1 position at the box office this weekend, scoring an estimated $23.4 million in ticket sales. Unfortunately, that makes Funny People the lowest-grossing film to reach No. 1 this summer, an honor we’re not quite sure everyone at Universal was hoping for back when the season started. As we do each Monday, here’s a breakdown of the top five at the box office.

1. Funny People: $23.4 million ($23.4 million total)

Like the marketing campaign, which could never find footing between the comedy and drama that Funny People employs fairly equally throughout its two-and-a-half-hour running time, we’re not entirely sure what to make of this opening gross. For an Adam Sandler movie, it’s on the low end—not counting Reign Over Me, which opened on just under 1,700 screens, this is his worst opening since Spanglish started with $8.8 million in 2004. For Mr. Apatow, Funny People checks in well below the $30.7 million that Knocked Up pulled down two summers ago, but slightly ahead of The 40-Year-Old Virgin (though not in tickets sold). You’ll read today how this is yet another disappointment for Universal, but since Funny People is an R-rated dramedy with a prohibitive length, we’re not quite sure what everyone expected; it was never going to be The Hangover. As usual, word of mouth will be the deciding factor in how this does moving forward.

2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $17.7 million ($255.4 million total)

As The Half-Blood Prince steamrolls towards $300 million at the domestic box office, it’s a good time to look at how things are going internationally. Globally the boy wizard has accrued an astonishing $747.8 million, making it the second biggest hit of the year, behind only Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The moral of the story: Buy Warner Brothers stock!

3. G-Force: $17 million ($66.4 million total)

Dipping a reasonable 46 percent in weekend two, G-Force held its own, finishing just behind Harry Potter, and now seems poised to crack $100 million at the box office this summer. If we would have told you in early July that G-Force would handily out-gross Brüno, we don’t necessarily think you would have believed us.

4. The Ugly Truth: $13 million ($54.4 million total)

Everyone might hate Katherine Heigl, but they certainly keep going to see her movies. The Ugly Truth dropped a to-be-expected 53 percent and managed to up its cume to over $50 million, putting it well on course for nearly $80 million in ticket receipts. With a budget under $38 million and an R-rating, we can’t imagine anyone at Sony being upset with this performance.

5. Aliens in the Attic: $7.8 million ($7.8 million total)

Aliens in the Attic edged out the second weekend of Orphan ($7.2 million/$26.7 million total) to finish in fifth place. If you ever found yourself wondering what a movie dumped on 3,106 screens would look like, you now have an answer.

Upset alert! In a somewhat shocking turn of events, G-Force—heretofore known to adults-with-children as “that movie we were dragged to with the talking guinea pigs”—topped the charts this weekend with an estimated $32.1 million in ticket sales, which was enough to knock boy wizard Harry Potter into second place. With Up and The Proposal already having huge runs, G-Force is just another feather in the hat for Disney. Meanwhile, it was a tale of have and have-not for the other new releases: The Ugly Truth danced its way into third, with a decidedly not-ugly $27 million, while Orphan haunted fourth, but with just $12.7 million. As we do each Monday, here’s a breakdown of the top five at the box office.

1. G-Force: $32.1 million ($32.1 million total)

Never forget: Kids love talking animals. When placed within that rubric, the surprise success of G-Force isn’t actually all that surprising; lest we forget, it was just last year when the similarly themed Beverly Hills Chihuahua managed to gross nearly $95 million. Still, we doubt many people at Warner Brothers thought they’d be waking up this morning to find that their unstoppable boy wizard was taken down by a movie directed by the guy who did visual effects on Kangaroo Jack.

2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $30 million ($221.8 million total)

There will be plenty of hysterics today proclaiming that The Half-Blood Prince is in trouble after crumbling 61 percent in weekend two. Do us a favor, though, and don’t necessarily believe them. While losing the top spot to G-Force is certainly embarrassing, it doesn’t actually matter. After only 12 days, The Half-Blood Prince is already the fifth-highest-grossing movie of the year and the fastest Potter in the history of the franchise to reach $400 million overseas. We have a hard time considering a film with over $620 million in worldwide ticket sales to be anything other than a runaway smash.

3. The Ugly Truth: $27 million ($27 million total)

Katherine Heigl was right all along: She is a movie star! The polarizing actress further cemented her A-list bona fides thanks to the successful launch of The Ugly Truth. Think of it this way: With a prohibitive R-rating and terrible reviews, the film managed to debut with $27 million, which is only $6 million less than The Proposal did with a PG-13-rating and great reviews. We doubt that The Ugly Truth will have the staying power of The Proposal, but the point remains: Ms. Heigl is poised to have a very long and lucrative career making the romantic comedies that Sandy and Julia outgrow.

4. Orphan: $12.7 million ($12.7 million total)

Where are the successful horror movies this summer? In May, Drag Me to Hell came and went without much of a whimper; now, here in July, Orphan is set to do even worse. With such a glaring hole in the marketplace for what is usually such a lucrative genre, we’re wondering if 20th Century Fox is upset they didn’t slot their September horror flick Jennifer’s Body into early August. We have a feeling it could have cleaned up.

5. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: $8.2 million ($171.2 million total)

For the third week in a row, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs barely held off Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (which, with $379 million domestically, has become the tenth-highest-grossing picture of all time) to finish in fifth place. The story here lies internationally: Though it might not top crack $200 million domestically, Dawn of the Dinosaurs has pulled down over $500 million in foreign sales—roughly $100 million more than Revenge of the Fallen. Who knew Ray Romano had such worldwide appeal?

With all this extra money lying around, perhaps it might be time for Hogwarts to add a new wing to the campus: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ruled the roost over the weekend conjuring up an estimated $79.4 million in ticket sales. (Wizard jokes, hello!) Add that to the nearly $80 million the film grossed since opening on Wednesday, and Half-Blood Prince has already taken in an astonishing $159.6 million in grosses. Meanwhile, opening in 12th place was (500) Days of Summer, which averaged more than $31,000 from just 27 screens. It looks like the breakout indie hit of the summer has potentially arrived. As we do each Monday, here’s a breakdown of the top five at the box office.

1. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $79.4 million ($159.6 million total)

We guess there is some bad news—The Half Blood Prince’s three-day total gives it the second-lowest three-day opening weekend in the Harry Potter series; the film failed to reach the $200 million that Tranformers: Revenge of the Fallen grossed in its first five days last month—but those complaints seem like nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking. With $159.6 million already in the bank, The Half-Blood Prince should find itself comfortably grossing upward of $290 million domestically, which would place the film among the top three in the franchise. Another Potter, another blockbuster.

2. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: $17.7 million ($152 million total)

This train just keeps rolling, huh? Dawn of the Dinosaurs dipped just 35 percent this weekend, bringing its total north of $150 million domestically and over $500 million worldwide. What started out looking like a potential disappointment for 20th Century Fox is anything but: This brand appears to have enough legs to support a fourth film if necessary.

3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: $13.7 million ($363.8 million total)

Can Paramount finagle a way to push Revenge of the Fallen over $400 million domestically? What seemed like a sure thing following the $200 million five-day start now appears to be getting harder and harder to imagine with each passing weekend. To wit: Transformers dropped 43 percent over the weekend and is sorta running out of steam. Do Shia LaBeouf and his killer robot friends have another $40 million in the couch cushions? We’re not so sure.

4. Brüno: $8.37 million ($49.5 million total)

It turns out the joke was on Sacha Baron Cohen after all. By plummeting nearly 73 percent in weekend two, Brüno is now the proud owner of the third-largest weekend-to-weekend drop this year, behind only Friday the 13th (80 percent) and Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience (77 percent). While we will readily admit that with $50 million in domestic grosses already in the bank, Universal will probably end up in the black on their investment, trying to spin Brüno as anything other than an outright disaster is absolutely ridiculous. This movie is a bomb, plain and simple.

5. The Hangover: $8.31 million ($235.8 million total)

Hot on Brüno’s heels were both The Hangover and The Proposal ($8.29 million/$128 million total), and, as usual, both found themselves with the lowest percentage drops amongst the top 10. If this sounds like a broken record, that’s because it is: Outside of the massive openings from Transformers and Harry Potter, the story of the summer remains how much audiences seem to love these two comedies. Brüno should be taking notes.

If you’re not wild about wizards, muggles, or you-know-who, it might be best to stay home this weekend and catch up on some reading. With the temperatures and humidity rising to actual summertime levels, theaters are sure to be packed with rabid Harry Potter fans hoping for another glimpse at their bespectacled hero. As we do every Friday, here’s a handy guide to the new releases.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

What’s the story: The kids from Hogwarts return for a sixth engagement filled with spells, hormones, special effects and some disappointment. Fans and critics alike have been somewhat mixed about the quality of The Half-Blood Prince—our Rex Reed calls it “two and a half hours of paralyzing tedium”—but that hasn’t stopped the film from taking in a mind-melting $58.2 million since opening on Wednesday and over $100 million worldwide. The last event movie of the summer looks like it could wind up being the year’s biggest hit. And Harry does it all without the help of chaste vampires. Take that, Stephenie Meyer!

Who should see it: Edward Cullen.

(500) Days of Summer

What’s the story: Allow us to introduce your new favorite angst-ridden romantic comedy. (500) Days of Summer, from music video director Marc Webb, opens in only a handful of theaters around the country today, but we have a feeling it’ll be a groundswell success. Think of it as—gasp!—the Garden State of 2009. [Ed note: but better.] Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel (the respective boy/girl crushes of the moment) star as a pair of mismatched lovers in this tale of a relationship gone sour. The reviews have been uniformly strong, touting a breakout performance from Mr. Levitt and more of the same wistfulness that we’ve come to expect from Ms. Deschanel (and that’s a good thing!). Plus, the soundtrack features everything from the Smiths to Hall & Oates. By the time fall rolls around, you’ll might be saying how overrated Summer is, but take a moment to enjoy it while the weather is still nice.

Who should see it: Lloyd Dobler.

Am I the only person over 12 who truly believes the Harry Potter franchise has outlived its shelf life? Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth and worst installment yet, is two and a half hours of paralyzing tedium, featuring another colossal waste of British talent and a plot a real witch couldn’t find with a crystal ball. The kids at Hogwarts no longer have any relevance. They have never heard of iPods, cell phones or the Internet. Yet they keep on coming, like deer ticks.

Don’t ask me what this thing is about. The 10-year-old in the next seat at the press screening told me it was her favorite of all the J. K. Rowling books, but at the end she did not applaud. In fact, this is the first Harry Potter movie I’ve ever seen that faded to black in deafening silence. The über-demon Lord Voldemort, vanquished countless times by the moppet warlocks at Hogwarts, returns from the grave in swirls of tornadolike smoke spiraling from the sky to destroy Millennium Bridge, and nothing is safe until Harry can master the clues to unraveling the secrets in the potions book that once belonged to the nonsensical “Half-Blood Prince.” Harry’s ally against the Death Eaters is Hogwarts potions professor Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent); his adversaries include the malevolent professor Severus Snape, played by snarling, prissy-mouthed Alan Rickman, and nasty Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) and his gothic nightmare aunt Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter). Challenged and thwarted at every turn, the other “regulars,” like Harry’s pals Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint)—so cute at 11 when the series began—are now 19 and horny as gerbils. With such a bramble of romantic entanglements, they scarcely have time to notice the dragon blood dripping from the ceiling when they’re so busy making out behind the wolfsbane. The flying broomstick competitions (been there, done that) are like outtakes. Whatever suspense there is surrounds the true identity of the “Half-Blood Prince,” and if you don’t guess who that is from his first snarl, you just haven’t been paying attention. (There’s also a dull subplot, about Ron’s near-death experience with a particularly potent love potion, that could easily been cut.) Julie Walters has one line. Maggie Smith does an occasional walk-on to bark, “Go to your houses—no dawdling!” There’s not nearly enough action and entirely too much metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. The deaths of beloved characters are likely to leave the little ones bawling. Even the visual effects are tired. The underground grotto where Harry and Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) take on the zombies of the undead looks like a clip from one of the previous five films. Some fine directors enhanced the earlier Potter epics; David Yates is not one of them. I pray Steve Kloves, the gifted filmmaker who scripted the first four films and now returns for the boring sixth, soon throws in the towel and gets back to his real talent for writing and/or directing original films of his own, like the memorable The Fabulous Baker Boys and Flesh and Bone.

As for Daniel Radcliffe, who has outgrown the role of Harry Potter, it’s not easy to accept him after his full-frontal nude turn on Broadway in Equus. Gee, Harry, we hardly recognized ye with thee clothes on.

rreed@observer.com

Around 6 P.M, the cast began arriving. Before the Harry/Ron/Hermione Big Three made their way to reporters, spiky-haired Lance Bass, Kelsey Grammer, Marcia Gay Harden, Ashanti and Chevy Chase waved across the street to fans who were most definitively not there for them. "You're not allowed to get bored of Harry Potter," said Mark Indelicato of Ugly Betty, one of the few celebrities willing to give interviews. "It’s, like, against the law.”

There had been much pre-premiere hubbub about the newest element of the series: snogging! The underaged stars dressed to remind us that their well-publicized puberties have finally ended: Emma Watson, a.k.a. Hermione, wore a two-tone backless leather Proenza Schouler getup; Bonnie Wright, who plays Harry’s newest love interest, Ginny Weasley, teetered in strappy red velvet heels, also worn by a young woman behind her on the red carpet. “Tut tut,” Ms. Wright joked. “No good!”

Tom Felton, who plays evil Draco Malfoy, was “thrilled” that he did not have a kissing scene of his own, unlike his co-stars. “I heard it was a bit awkward among old friends,” he said, tugging at his un-tied bowtie, and attending to his extraordinarily leggy girlfriend, Jade Olivia, whom he described as “the jewel on my arm.”

“We’re Harry Potter, man, its all above the waist, we’re very chaste,” star Daniel Radcliffe, clad in a shiny blue-silver suit, assured the Transom, referring to the film’s racy bits. Rupert Grint, who had just recovered from a bout of swine flu, remarked that his parents “didn’t really freak out. It was just like a normal flu!” Ms. Watson, last into the theater, is attending college in the States this fall, though she has not yet revealed which (Brown or Columbia, it is thought). Is she nervous about co-ed bathrooms? “Oh God, I didn’t realize …that’s news to me,” she said: “I look forward to that part of the experience.”

After the film, guests were transported to a party at the Museum of Natural History's Powerhouse via red double decker buses. Once deposited, the crowd—equal parts skinny-jean-donning 12-year-olds, haggard publicists and actual adults who looked slightly embarrassed about it all—sloshed through billowing dry ice into the massive space.

Children were greeted by a lavish dessert bar, as well as a station holding the Harry Potter video game and a photo booth with wizard robes where they could pose in front of a Hogwarts backdrop, which inebriated adults seemed to enjoy as well. Bartenders wore witch hats.

Outdoors, between trees affixed with crossed broomsticks, the cast lounged on white couches and admired the Planetarium’s massive orb, onto which Quidditch scenes from the movie were projected.

A man wove his way through the crowd, offering card tricks to innocent bystanders. “That’s weird,” exclaimed one aloof-looking handsome guest after seeing one. “That’s weird.”

Accordingly, the Times lists Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince as the biggest movie in 2009. Originally scheduled to be released around Thanksgiving, the sixth film in the series was pushed back to July so Warner Brothers could have a summer tent pole. In what we'd consider an upset, Michael Mann's 1930s gangster romp Public Enemies checks in at number two. Starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, Christian Bale as the FBI agent trying to bring him down and Billy Crudup as J. Edgar Hoover, it might be Mr. Mann's chance at Oscar glory. Mr. Crudup and Mr. Bale are actually going to be quite busy next year. The Almost Famous star appears in Watchmen (number 4 on the list), while the Dark Knight himself starts yet another franchise reboot with Terminator: Salvation (number 9).

What struck us though was the exclusion of what are sure to be two of the most talked about movies of next year: Pixar's Up and Judd Apatow's Funny People. The just released teaser trailer for Up looks predictably amazing. The story of a grumpy old man (voiced by Ed Asner) who fulfills his deceased wife's dream of going on an African adventure by tying a bunch of balloons to his house and floating away is right in Pixar's melancholy wheel-house. As for Funny People, by the time it's released it'll be the first new directorial offering from Mr. Apatow in two years. A recent script review has us salivating that Funny People might be the fabled next step in his career: a funny, sad, warm and adult take on mortality and relationships... but with dick jokes. Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Eric Bana, Jason Schwartman and Jonah Hill star. Both films hit theaters next summer.

Here's the top-ten: