By Dean Goodman
LOS ANGELES, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Marital mayhem was the theme at the North American box office this weekend as the
vengeful wife movie ``Double Jeopardy'' remained No. 1, and Harrison Ford's
cheating spouse film ``Random Hearts'' opened atNo. 2.
``Double Jeopardy,'' which has now logged three consecutive weekends at No. 1, earned $13.6 million for the latest Friday-
to-Sunday period, according to studio estimates issued Sunday. Its 17-day total stands at $65.8 million.
Ashley Judd plays a woman who sets out to kill her husband for good, after being being wrongly imprisoned for his murder first
time around when he fakes his death. A spokesman for Paramount Pictures, which released the film, predicted it would end up
in the $90 million area.
``Random Hearts'' opened at No. 2 with $13.1 million. The $60 million drama stars Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas who fall in
love after learning that their respective spouses were having an affair with each other. A spokesman for Columbia Pictures said
the critically maligned movie played mostly to viewers aged over 25.
The other new entry this weekend was ``Superstar,'' a comedy spin-off from TV's ``Saturday Night Live'' about a geeky
Catholic schoolgirl with dreams of stardom. It opened at No. 5 with $9.0 million. Paramount said the estimate was ''aggressive''
because it supposes that Monday's Columbus Day holiday will free up a lot of the film's core audience of teens and under-25s on
Sunday.
``Three Kings'' (Warner Bros.) slipped a notch to No. 3 in its second weekend with $11.7 million, a reasonable 26 percent
decline from its opening round. The 10-day haul for the acclaimed Gulf War action drama stands at $32.4 million.
In its first weekend of wide release, ``American Beauty'' (DreamWorks) was also down a rung, to No. 4, with $9.2 million. This
represented a 13 percent increase from last weekend thanks to a jump in its screen count to 1,226 from 706. A DreamWorks
spokesman said the film would not go too much wider from now. The top three movies are each playing on more than 2,600
screens. The 26-day total for ``American Beauty'' is $30.8 million.
According to Exhibitor Relations, which collects the studios' data, the top 12 films this weekend grossed a combined $79.3
million, up 2.3 percent from a week ago, and up 21.6 percent from the year-ago period when the computer animated comedy
``Antz'' was the top attraction for a second weekend.
Among movies launching in limited release, ``The Limey,'' a crime caper starring Peter Fonda and Terence Stamp, earned
$180,000 from 17 screens; and ``Boys Don't Cry,'' a fact-based movie starring Hilary Swank as a cross-dressing girl, pulled in
about $65,000 from two New York screens.
Rounding out the the top 10 were ``The Sixth Sense'' (Hollywood) at No. 6 with $6.1 million (66-day total $242.7 million); ``Blue
Streak'' (Columbia) at No. 7 with $5.5 million (24-day total $55 million); ``Drive Me Crazy'' (Fox) at No. 8 with $3.7 million
(10-day total $11.5 million); and tied at No. 9 with $2.1 million each, Columbia's ``The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland''
(10-day total $6.1 million) and Universal's ``For Love of the Game'' (24-day total $31.5 million).
Paramount Pictures is a unit of Viacom Inc. Columbia Pictures is a unit of Sony Corp. Warner Bros. is a unit of Time Warner
Inc. DreamWorks SKG is privately held. Hollywood Pictures is a unit of Walt Disney Co. Twentieth Century Fox is a unit of
Fox Entertainment Group Inc. Universal Pictures is a unit of Seagram Co. Ltd.
mystery
type adventure, he sucks. Working Girl, Sabrina, 6 Days 7 Nights, and
Regarding Henry did not do that well. Mosquito Coast was not released well
and Ford played a somewhat villainous character in that. Ford is not a
guaranteed box office success. His name does not make someone automatically see
the movie. The plot is always the #1 reason people go to see a movie.
Random Hearts opened up very poorly for a socalled Harrison Ford movie. If
you have seen the preview, you know it does not look like the most thrilling
epic adventure. In fact, the preview shows you everything there is to
know. Ford's wife dies in a plane crash sitting next to her supposed lover
who was the husband of a senator. Ford and Kristin "what's the point
of being a horse whisperer when horses don't speak english" Scott Thomas
try to figure out why they were used the way they were and along the way the
fall in love. Joy, we get to see Ford try to emote. If he is not
running away from bullets, Ford is very boring. Expect RH to fall out of
the top 5 by next week. It looks like he will be blocking out time on his
schedule to make Indiana Jones 4 within the next 2 years. 
to
box office success were the ones that did not do a sketch but an original
idea. Murphy got Beverly Hills Cop, Myers got Austin Powers, and Sandler
took his singing gimmick and made Wedding Singer, his Cajun Man gimmick and made
Waterboy, and his bad little boy gimmick and made Big Daddy. However,
Sandler did not once play Opera Man, Cajun Man, or Studboy in his movies.
Shannon is good on SNL, and the Mary Katherine Gallagher sketch is somewhat
funny and gets a good pop from the crowd when she comes out, but it is not
worthy of a full length motion picture. For one thing, Shannon is like
32-34 years old, and her costar Will Ferrell has to be around 35 or so playing
high school students. It looks ridiculous on screen. Smelling armpits,
quoting West Side Story, and showing your panties does not 93 minutes
make. SNL sketches are meant to be told in 5 to 10 minutes, not an hour
and a half. Lorne M. does not realize this and it seems that he never
will. The next sketch to come out will be The Ladies Man. A very funny
sketch that got the underrated Tim Meadows much needed screen time, but it will
not carry a film. If they turn the cheerleaders sketch into a movie I just
might quit writing my box office reports.