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David Mumpower: Along those lines but taking demographics out of the equation, Think Like a Man performed like New Year's Eve had been projected but utterly failed to do, at least domestically. For that matter, $33 million is almost Grown Ups territory. Sandler's buddy film opened to $40.5 million. Think Like a Man bests four out of his five most recent opening weekends (Jack and Jill, Just Go With It, Funny People and Bedtime Stories).

Bruce Hall: "It's kind of like a Tyler Perry movie, but good."

That seems to be the consensus armchair analysis in my part of the world. In my opinion, Tyler Perry's relatively slow decline is similar to the relatively epic decline associated with M. Night Shyamalan (spelled it right on the first try, thank you). I say all the time that "formula works," but if that's what you're going to rely on to keep people coming back, you're going to have to be a particularly shrewd storyteller with consistently fresh ideas.

Go ahead, insert your own punchline.

Being something of mutt myself, I've never been very plugged in to the appeal of ethno-centric media. But to my eyes, it seems as though ever since Spike Lee started buying his own hype and John Singleton went mainstream, Tyler Perry has been the go to guy for African American presence in popular cinema. And while his message is an admirable one, the execution is by now far more stale than whatever that is coming from my refrigerator. When people want more of something, finding a better product at about the same price means everything. When I started college, my idea of exotic beer was Heineken. Imagine my joy when I discovered the true expanse of sudsy goodness the world had to offer became known to me.

Great trailers, popular source material, good talent, excellent word-of-mouth and positive reviews are helping Think Like a Man give the box office a little extra juice this weekend. And perhaps, one can hope, a shot in the arm to a genre that's needed one for a very long time.

Felix Quinonez: No matter how you look at this, $33 million is a great number. That's higher than even most wildly optimistic numbers. But I'm not sure how much I would really attribute it to Kevin Hart. I'm sure having him in the movie didn't hurt but I'm not ready to label him a star yet. I think the fact is that a lot of times studios ignore this target audience and when something comes out that does well, we're all surprised. But the fact is the audience is there, which Tyler Perry has proven again and again. Even Tyler Perry's so called decline really only affects his more "serious" movies like For Colored Girls and Good deeds. I think a lot of the success has to do with the fact that they went after an audience that is not often catered to and the marketing was very targeted.

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