Ford And Pfeiffer Don't Fail To Thrill

The new thriller What Lies Beneath managed to scare up plenty of business at theaters this weekend. Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer proved to be a powerful big-screen team. Here are the numbers for the past weekend's box office returns, according to Hollywood.com.

CBS News' Early Show Contributor Laurie Hibberd has details in her Box Office Plus report.

Pikachu and friends proved they still have pull with the kiddie set. Pokemon, the Movie 2000 came in a strong third place with nearly $22 million in weekend revenue. Scary Movie and The Perfect Storm rounded out the top five slots, with about $15 million and $9.5 million in returns respectively.

The reviews weren't so hot for What Lies Beneath but it fared pretty well, with $30 million in weekend revenue.

There are three reasons What Lies Beneath scored, said Hibberd: It had a terrific trailer and created a lot of buzz. Also, it's been a while since a real adult film came out. It has two fortysomething/fiftysomething stars in it, so adults went to see it. It brought out a lot of people who weren't going to see X-Men. Never underestimate the star power of Ford and Pfeiffer.

In What Lies Beneath, Pfeiffer plays a wife haunted by a woman who had an affair with her husband, played by Ford.

This new movie could be considered almost a personal best for Ford. Air Force One was the biggest opening hit he ever had. Ford has tried to do the romantic lead thing as in Six Days/Seven Nights and Random Hearts. For some reason, even though he is considered one of the sexiest men on film, viewers tend to want to see him save the day as an Indiana Jones type.

What Lies Beneath is Pfieffer's movie when you look at it. She goes the distance in this film. She has a lot of different sides to her, and viewers see a great acting stretch. It could be deemed a personal best for her, except for Batman.

Reviewing Pfieffer's prior screen roles, Up Close and Personal was the biggest hit she ever had. She picks very eclectic movies. (Who wants to see the depressing The Deep End of the Ocean made into a movie?)

Director Robert Zemeckis, whose previous work includes Forrest Gump, Back to the Future, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, said earlier he finally found the right script to tackle a thriller. What Lies Beneath is the type of film Alfred Hitchcock would have done if he had had access to modern technology.

"There are certain techniques that you have when you are making a thriller," Zemeckis said. "You do things with th camera, you do things with the sound, you do things with the music. Sometimes, they are there to build suspense, sometimes they are there to misdirect the audience."

"But," he added, "a thriller works the same way as a comedy, the same way that a dramatic movie works. You laugh, you cry, or it scares you. The key element is to shift the audience from their intellect to their emotions."

Zemeckis' film Forrest Gump used emotion and incredible special effects to attract a huge audience. With What Lies Beneath, he hoped more subtle effects will have the same results. "When you have a movie like this one, the effects have to be used very sparingly, or very invisibly like they are," he said. "So sometimes you are looking at shots, and you have no idea that there are special effects. But it's the only way sometimes you can do a shot."

But no matter how may special effects you have, success for a film like this comes down to one thing: the chemistry between the actors. "You never know if you have chemistry until you do it, until the first day," the director said. "And you don't even know on the first day, standing next to the camera, because chemistry is something that happens in two dimensions. It has nothing to do with reality. It's one of those magical things that happens when you're seeing actors who are gifted with screen presence, magnified."

Zemeckis said that he "had a pretty good hunch, because I had two wonderfully talented dynamic superstar actors. There was probably a good idea they would have great chemistry. If you didn't have stars of this caliber, you could screen-test actors and see. But you can't test Harrison and Michelle to see if they have chemistry. You just can't."

This past weekend X-Men raked in almost $100 million, meaning more than a 50 percent drop-off in returns. What's happening is the movie is not crossing over to the mainstream, though the die-hard fans are still going to see it.

Pokemon the Movie 2000 had a strong third-place showing, which shouldn't be surprising for parents of young children. Pokemon The Movie 2000 is a follow-up to the 1999 children's film. The original film took in $50 million in its opening weekend. Critics are saying the Pokemon phenomenon is over, with kids under age 10 moving on to Powerpuff Girls.

Amy Heckerling's Loser, pursuing the teen and twentysomething audience, did not deliver on the audience front. American Pie was a big hit and then Hollywood starts to churn out these teen-driven movies like Ten Things I Hate About You and She's All That, and the teens get tired of it. (It's the same with The In Crowd, which tried to gain extra viewership by opening last Wednesday but which didn't rank in the top 10.)

Director Heckerling of Clueless and Fast Times at Ridgemont High has graduated to college. The film reunite American Pie co-stars Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari, who play college students trying to fit in and fall in love; Suvari starred in American Beauty as the object of Kevin Spacey's desires.

It started out as a slow summer but it has really picked up and proved to be one of the best summers yet and much better than last summer.