2 films defy convention by making steady gains

According to conventional Hollywood wisdom, movie box-office earnings decline — sometimes by as much as half — after a film's opening weekend. The number of screens on which a film is showing also decreases in successive weeks.

Two films, however, have defied that supposed wisdom to become the summer's real success stories — "Wedding Crashers" and "March of the Penguins." The films have so far earned $144 million and $26 million, respectively, which places them at Nos. 10 and 49 on the 2005 box-office chart . . . so far.

They're hardly leading the pack, of course ("Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith" still tops the list, with nearly $380 million), but after two weeks of finishing second to "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Wedding Crashers" finally claimed the top spot in its third week. Obviously the film is benefitting from strong word-of-mouth and will probably have legs, as they say in the industry.

The R-rated comedy has also been defying the industry logic that says comedies need the supposedly more family-friendly PG-13 rating to succeed. Not that it shouldn't have an R rating; "Wedding Crashers" definitely earns it. But a lot of PG-13 films out there should also be rated R and sneak by under the radar, much to the chagrin of parents.

On the other hand, "March of the Penguins" — which is rated G! — has continued to rise on the top-10 chart every week since it was released nearly two months ago in the larger markets. A lot of that has to do with the fact that its distributor, Warner Independent Pictures, has expanded its release from a couple hundred screens to more than 1,500.

That's good news. If any film deserves to make money this year, it's this involving documentary feature, a throwback to old Disney "True Life Adventures."

• YOU CAN CALL ME CRAZY NOW. I make no apologies for enjoying the movie version of "The Dukes of Hazzard." Nope. Not gonna to do it.

And while I'll fully admit the film is most definitely dumb, low-brow and even irresponsible in places, it's really no different from the television show that inspired it. (And in my review, I described it as "sort of fun in a slumming kind of way.")

To be honest, I'm still trying to figure out where some of film's harshest critics are coming from.

M.K. Terrell of the Christian Science Monitor said the film is "just an excuse for car chases." Well, duh! That was the television program's modus operandi as well.