Little Comedian braves the red shirts and Green Zone

Sweet comedy is proving to be the salve to soothe the bleeding eardrums of Bangkokians besieged by the anti-government red-shirt rallies that have taken over parts of the Thai capital for the past week.

The top film at the box office last weekend was GTH’s Baan Chan ... Talok Wai Gon (Por Son Wai) (บ้านฉัน...ตลกไว้ก่อน (พ่อสอนไว้), The Little Comedian), which earned $425,221 (about 13.7 million baht).

Shown on 117 screens, according to Box Office Mojo, the story of the one unfunny boy in a family of comedians outmuscled Matt Damon in director Paul Greengrass's gritty Iraq War follow-cam drama Green Zone.

The previous week's No. 1, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, dropped to third, with the pretty cool Ethan Hawke vampire thriller Daybreakers in fourth place.

The top five is rounded out by another Thai comedy, Kongphan Kruekkruen Tor Tahan Kuekkuk (Jolly Rangers), a slapstick army boot-camp farce from Phranakorn. The Jolly Rangers have been tenacious since their release on February 25-28, when the comedy was in second place to Sahamongkol's moody horror Who Are You. While Who Are You plummeted to fifth place in its second week of release, Kongphan Kruekkruen Tor Tahan Kuekkuk hung on in third under Alice and Daybreakers.

This week sees the release of the "monks-with-guns" crime drama Nak Prok (Shadow of the Naga) from Sahamongkol. Buddhist groups have demanded the film be banned, which might actually make people want to watch it, but the blood-letting stunts and other plans to stir shit by the red-shirt demonstrators might cause disruptions and make folks want to stay at home.

Update: Kong Rithdee has his review of The Little Comedian in today's Bangkok Post, which sums up: "Released against a backdrop of bloody unrest, GTH's latest bit of bland escapism seems more inconsequential than ever."