Audiences fall out of love with 4 Romances, embrace Super Hap

With the holidays over, it's time to crack open Box Office Mojo and catch up on the box-office performance over the Christmas and New Year's weekends.

Released on Christmas Day, Sahamongkol Film International's 4 Romances (Fun Waan Aai Joop), opened at No. 1 on its first weekend, topping another first-week release, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.

Another Thai romance, Happy Birthday, fell to third from No. 1 the week before, while the RS Film musical comedy Super Hap Sap Sabud was in fourth. Down further, Ong-Bak 2 was holding on in eighth place.

The following week, the new releases were on New Year's Eve, which fell on a Wednesday, so the movies, which usually open on Thursday in Thailand, started a day earlier.

4 Romances took a dramatic drop, falling to sixth place. Seems word-of-mouth buzz had gotten around about the movie, and audiences just didn't know what to make of the mix of comedy, weepy melodrama and colorfully wacky animation by four different directors. According to an anonymous comment, audience members were getting up and leaving during the final sequence -- the "out of place" cartoon tale by Chukiat Sakveerakul. Too bad.

Topping the box office over New Year's weekend was the kid-friendly Adam Sandler comedy Bedtime Stories with Super Hap in second place. Madagascar 2 was in third, followed by the newly released Phranakorn action fantasy, Deep in the Jungle, in fourth.

Happy Birthday was at No. 5, while Ong-Bak 2 was hanging on at ninth.

The numbers are at Box Office Mojo.

Also, Bangkok of the Mind has a few thoughts about the performance of 4 Romance and the apparently waning power of teen star Mario Maurer - a guy that audiences want to see punched.