The all-powerful young male demographic proved to be stronger than girl power at the box office last weekend.

The lewd and crude R-rated drugs and guns comedy "Pineapple Express" did about twice the business of the sweet and romantic PG-13 rated "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2."

Both films opened on a Wednesday rather than a Friday to gain extra first week business.

I attended one of the opening day showings of "Traveling Pants" at an area multiplex packed with young women. Their response bodes well for the movie's — no pun intended — legs.

The girls around me went from happily chatting and socializing before the film to absolute silence as the story of four best college girlfriends unfolded on the screen. When the film ended, "Traveling Pants" received a round of applause (something that doesn't happen often at movies for boys).

The atmosphere at "Traveling Pants" was similar to what I encountered at an area debut screening of "Sex and the City" earlier in the summer — you could feel the female audience's appreciation of a (rare) Hollywood movie made with them in mind.

Another underserved movie constituency — older people who avoid the big Hollywood summer films — has made unlikely hits out of two films in limited release, the French thriller "Tell No One" and the lush British period piece, "Brideshead Revisited."

The Los Angeles Times ran a good feature last week on the way "Tell No One" has quietly earned close

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to $4 million playing in only a tiny fraction of the theaters that book the summer blockbusters. While Hollywood films tend to open and close within a few weeks now, "Tell No One" has been steadily building due to strong word of mouth. The art film subsidiaries of the major studios all passed on the French thriller, leaving it to the small Chicago-based distributor Music Box Films to score the biggest foreign film hit of the year.

Families seem to be splitting up at the movies in recent weeks due to the lack of a big audience-unifying hit. "The Dark Knight" might be breaking all sorts of financial records, but I know a lot of people over the age of 40 who have no interest in seeing it.