Debuting in wide release this weekend were two movies: Cop Out and The Crazies. While I predicted Crazies would top Kevin Smith’s latest the box office results proved me wrong. Both films on Friday made $5.9 million, however by Sunday Cop Out took second place with $18.6 million. Though Smith only served as director of the project, the flick had the highest opening weekend ever for any one of his films. This could be due to the unexpected controversy over Smith being described as “too fat to fly” on a Southwest Airline plane, and then later booted off, or it could be due to Cop Out’s being the most commercial Smith movie. About two police officers en route to find a missing baseball card, the comedy surpassed Smith’s previous work Zack and Miri Make a Porno’s first admission of $10.1 million in October 2008. Critics didn’t help the movie’s total too much, however. Cop Out finished on Friday with a rotten rating of 20% on site Rotten Tomatoes.

Breck Eisner’s remake of George A. Romero’s horror The Crazies was also introduced this weekend. The revival, about a government’s accidental spreading of a lethal war contaminant, managed $16.5 million at #3. This opening gross didn’t beat director Eisner’s last effort Sahara, probably due to the fact that the former had a rating of PG-13 with recognizable stars while Crazies held a restricted tag and starred no one as big as Matthew McConaughey. Although this flick earned itself a fresh 71% on Rotten Tomatoes; Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips even went as far as to calling it “better than the original”. Crazies was unable to overcome last February’s horror reboot Friday the 13^th’s opening haul of $40.6 million. But to be fair nobody called that one making as much as it did.

James Cameron’s massive success Avatar dropped only 13.8% to fourth place with $14 million, still in the top five after 11 weeks in release. Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief brings us out at #5 this weekend with $9.8 million. The kiddie flick’s total is up to $71.2 million in three weeks.

Out of the top five-

• Jacques Audiard’s French gangster fiasco A Prophet (Un prophète), nominated for best foreign film at next week’s Oscars, started off on nine screens and grossed $170,000, a per screen average of $18,900.
• Adam Kane’s thriller Formosa Betrayed starring James Van Der Beek debuted with $69,000 playing on 15 screens.
• Writer-director Peter Stebbings dramedy Defendor, starring Woody Harrelson as a regular guy who thinks he has super powers, opened with $21,000 on four screens after playing on one less last weekend.

Here are the box office results according to studio estimates Sunday-

1. 1. Shutter Island…$22.2 million
2. 2. Cop Out…$18.6 million
3. 3. The Crazies…$16.5 million
4. 4. Avatar…$14 million
5. 5. Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief…$9.8 million
6. 6. Valentine’s Day…$9.5 million
7. 7. Dear John…$5 million
8. 8. The Wolfman…$4.1 million
9. 9. Tooth Fairy…$3.5 million
10. 10. Crazy Heart…$2.5 million

The first title for Cop Out, about a retired New York police officer who hires his partner to sniff out a rare baseball card to fund his daughter’s wedding, was A Couple of Dicks. However due to the title issue with Zack and Miri (the “Make a Porno” suffix was cut off when the comedy hit DVD for mass appeal) the heading sadly had to change. What I love about Smith is that he’s fearless, and creates movies he knows will stir up controversy. Hell, we were talking about Dicks before, weren’t we?

Cop Out seems all too safe a name, and for that matter all too safe a movie. I can’t help but be unimpressed by both green band and red band trailers released for the film. The jokes seem tired, the premise is lame and has Bruce Willis played anyone in a movie lately who wasn’t a retired cop? The blame can’t be placed on Kevin Smith’s shoulders. That’s the burden of Robb and Mark Cullen, brothers-turned screenwriters with Cop Out. I’ve never heard of these two, although they have no experience at all doing anything movie-wise. They produced 17 and wrote four episodes of the Josh Duhamel-starring television crime drama Las Vegas. Should we be rest assured because they’ve written a few who-done-it TV episodes? I don’t know, but if their definition of a good case is something with Josh Duhamel then I think the Cullens have the same mindset as Michael Bay.

I’ll see Cop Out just because Kevin Smith directed it and, as it was also recently announced, took an 80% pay cut so the flick would get an R-rating. Even if this movie is a total bomb I won’t mark this is Smith’s failure. Up next he’s trying to make the horror Red State and a hockey film entitled Hit Somebody which some are insinuating is a passion project for him. Big-budgeted or not, this can’t be Kevin Smith selling out.

Check out the trailer below and tell me: is Cop Out worth seeing?

Click here to view the embedded video.