Eight films opened in wide release this weekend and, as expected, not all of them made much of a dent. In fact, thanks to the overcrowding, half of them outright flopped.

At the top of the pile were Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which connected with family audiences and scored $29.3 million -- even better than Eagle Eye last week -- and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, which came in third with a solid but not great $11.3 million. The well-reviewed film might benefit from good word-of-mouth, but is sitting pretty regardless -- the production budget was a scant $9 million.

Two films expanded from limited release with encouraging results. Ed Harris's Western Appaloosa scored $5.1 million from 1,045 theaters for a solid $4,833 per-theater average, while Bill Maher's Religulous made $3.4 million from only 502 theaters for a $6,792 average.

Then there were the flops: the rather bizarre An American Carol, which had a Michael Moore-type filmmaker in the Scrooge role of A Christmas Carol, flopped with $3.7 million (about the same as Religulous, yes, but it was in three times as many theaters). But it can at least brag about beating higher-profile competitors: Greg Kinnear's Flash of Genius made only $2.3 million, the heavily advertised Blindness was ignored with $1.95 million, and How to Lose Friends and Alienate People was just embarrassing with $1.4 million -- landing it in ninteenth place. After this and Run Fatboy Run, let's all admit that everybody jumped the gun on the whole "Simon Pegg is a breakout star!" thing.

The top ten official totals, in millions: