Summer is supposed to be the season of family-friendly PG and PG-13 blockbusters such as "Spider-Man" and "Men in Black."

But, last weekend the movie version of the HBO series, "Sex and the City," shocked Hollywood on multiple counts.

First and foremost, it knocked the Steven Spielberg-George Lucas production "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" out of the No. 1 box office slot after only a week.

Indeed, the opening day of "Sex and the City" brought in $27 million, which was $2 million more than the Indy sequel grossed during its first day in release.

I wasn't that surprised by the way the Sarah Jessica Parker vehicle bested the Harrison Ford movie because I attended a packed midnight preview screening in Trumbull where the manager told me it sold many more tickets than the "Crystal Skull" preview a week earlier. The other "Sex and the City" surprise was the film's demonstration that audiences will turn out in force for an R-rated movie in the summer blockbuster season. The $56 million opening weekend of "Sex and the City" was the biggest ever for an R-rated comedy, trumping the $45.1 million earned by "American Pie 2" seven years ago.

Another R-movie that opened last weekend, "The Strangers," also proved to be much more popular than industry analysts expected, grossing $20 million instead of the $10 million projections. The success of these two R-rated films shows that moviegoers are perhaps not as seasonally conditioned as the major studios

Advertisement
believe. At the very least, the staggering first weekend success of "Sex and the City" shows that adults are always searching for something a little racier than the PG-13 pictures that chase after the young teen audience. I have a hunch the movie would have done very well no matter what time of year it opened.

The movie business should return to summer form this weekend with the opening of the PG-rated DreamWorks cartoon, "Kung Fu Panda," which is being very widely released and should delight the kiddie crowd in sufficient numbers to take the top-grossing spot away from "Sex and the City."