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Technically, The Bourne Ultimatum should not be the lead story in today's update. The sequel to a movie that earned $164.3 million worldwide including $104.1 million domestically was released into theaters yesterday. Given the fact that Daddy Day Care star Eddie Murphy did not return for the follow-up, you have probably already deduced the type of quality being discussed here. Daddy Day Camp instead stars Cuba Gooding Jr., the actor who joins Marisa Tomei, Mira Sorvino, Jennifer Hudson and Frank Sinatra on the list of "It seemed like a good idea at the time" Academy Award-winning thespians. Seriously, look at those names again and realize that each of them has one more Academy Award than Cary Grant ever received.

Anyway, Cuba Gooding Jr.'s most recent headlining roles were in Shadowboxer ($400,000 domestically), Radio ($52.3 million domestically), The Fighting Temptations ($30.2 million domestically), and Boat Trip ($8.6 million domestically). Mr. Show Me the Money had done well with Snow Dogs ($81.2 million domestically) and Rat Race ($56.6 million domestically), so he's been right at 50/50 over the past six years with Radio counting as the other hit; however, this group does not include some of his other work in End Game, Dirty and In the Shadows, none of which even merited notable theatrical release. It's been a long time since Jerry Maguire - or even Snow Dogs. Gooding Jr. needs a hit, but it's obvious from looking over his track record where North American audiences stand with him.

If Gooding Jr.'s flagging popularity hadn't been made clear previously, the point was driven home when Daddy Day Camp debuted to a piddling $773,706. Remember how I was making fun of Hot Rod the other day for being a huuuuge box office non-factor? Hot Rod earned $822,752 in its sixth day of release, meaning that audiences were 6.3% more likely to go see it after almost a week in theaters than they were the moment Daddy Day Camp was available. The critically reviled children's film (but only for really, really stupid children) is currently 2% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes with only one critic out of 44 professing enjoyment for the title. Presumably, said critic's last name is also Gooding. At this point, the only good news I have for Cuba Jr. is that American Gangster is right around the corner. Maybe that will make people overlook what a sellout he has been here and how much it has blown up in his face.

As for The Bourne Ultimatum, it was the number one movie for the sixth consecutive day, earning $6,734,210. This is a decline of 9.8% from Tuesday's total of $7,466,400. In case you are wondering, Transformers fell 15.2% from its second Tuesday total of $8,253,776 to its second Wednesday total of $7,003,058. Its first Tuesday and Wednesday totals would be bad examples for a pair of reasons. The first is that the $56,924,914 earned on those days is hugely disproportionate to the other titles being discussed here. The following week is when the film had performed in the $70 million range the prior weekend. As such, it's the better comparison. And the other reason is that Transformers had a Tuesday-Wednesday increase of 4.4% due to holiday inflation, so it's a bad comparison all the way around.

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