“Expendables” Shows Box-Office Viagra

A group of aging Hollywood has-beens rally together to storm the box-office not just for one weekend, but two weekends in a row: if someone had pitched that screenplay two months ago it would have been a laugher.

Somehow "The Expendables" has managed to stay atop the movie box-office for the second weekend in a row.

The kids are paying to see the old guys shoot-em-up and have put Sylvester Stallone and company back on top of of the box office with an estimated take of $16.5 million.

It didn't hurt that the foes were not exactly up to par. The audience for Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman's romantic comedy "The Switch" dwindled, taking in just $8.1 million.

Even the atrocious "Bounty Hunter" opened at $20.7 earlier this year. But the audience wasn't biting wasn't going for the tale of artificial insemination gone way-wrong.

And the "Expendables" continued to clobber female-heavy "Eat Pray Love." The film slipped to third place in its second weekend, falling to $12 million for its weekend take.

So what gives? Blame it on the summer audience and people needing their Stallone nostalgia (and a few explosions)

"There hasn't been an action film like this since the throwback years" of the 1980s and '90s," David Spitz, head of distribution for Lionsgate, which released the picture told USA Today. "It's clear there's a public appetite for good action."

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