The movie year. 2009. so far. not good. for grown-ups.

Flashback:
About a month ago, the box-office tally for the March 20-22 weekend produced a lot of dropped jaws among dedicated movie analysts.

Somehow, the seemingly surefire Julia Roberts-Clive Owen romp, "Duplicity," failed to make the coveted Number One slot, upstaged by a standard-issue Nicolas Cage nonentity titled "Knowing."

Adding to the oddity of it all is the fact that the Cage film appeared to come out of nowhere, whereas the trailer for "Duplicity" seemed to be unreeling in the cineplexes for months prior to its opening.

What went wrong? A lot of wags blamed Roberts, the cads, jumping to the conclusion that her star powers has dimmed. Even the women on "The View" weighed in, suggesting that Roberts' relatively new status as a mom turns off the male audience core that once lusted after her.

Personally, I think the trailer for "Duplicity" made the movie look - how shall I put this? - intricate. A tad too intricate for today's modern attention-deficit audience. Meanwhile, the nakedly adolescent "Knowing" came across as a movie you could, well, sleep through and still "get." Earlier in the year, Owen's "The International," decidedly a film for adults, barely made a blip on the box-office radar. It was here and yet it's wasn't.

Flashforward:
It's the weekend of April 17-19. Zak Efron's "17 Again," a generic rehash, also takes movie-watchers by surprise, outdistancing Russell Crowe's sly and superb "State of Play" by several millions. Score one for the kids.

Again.

The moral of this disturbing tale:
Julia Roberts was hastily blamed for "Duplicity" not living up to its dollar-sign expectations. It had nothing to do with her status as star or mom.

If you go back and examine the Top Spot (the only place that counts these days) for each movie weekend, you'll notice that, with the possible exception of "He's Just Not That into You," it's been littered with films for kids and/or childlike adults, starting with "Paul Blart, Mall Cop," the year's first official hit. It spent two weeks in the Number One slot.

This hit list also includes: "Friday the 13th" and "Madea Goes to Jail" (both also the dominant films for two weeks in a row), "Race to Witch Mountain," "Monsters Vs. Aliens," "Taken," "Watchmen," "Fast and Furious" and ... drum roll, please ... "Hannah Montana: The Movie."

Maturity, seemingly, is out. Maybe not so seemingly. So is sophistication.

Brainless is in.

Note in Passing:
The weekend that "17 Again" opened, I happened upon Scott Mantz's enthusiastic review of the Efron film on "Access Hollywood." He also had a few positive words to say about "State of Play" but only in passing. (The focus of Mantz's piece was really "17 Again.") He ultimately commented that he couldn't get completely behind "State of Play" because - I'm paraphrasing him now - "you had to pay attention to it too much."

I'm afriad that says it all.

The End.