LOS ANGELES - Teen sex comedy "Superbad" topped the box office in North America for the second weekend running, beating off a troop of action movies to take 18 million dollars, preliminary figures showed Sunday.
The movie's gross-out humor grossed highest for the second week running, pulling in 18 million dollars over three days, down from 33 million last weekend, according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations. Its total takings since opening stood at 68.5 million.
The comedy directed by Greg Mottola stars Jonah Hill and Michael Cera as two nerdy school buddies desperately determined to score with the girls.
Two action flicks scrapped it out for second place: spy thriller "The Bourne Ultimatum" with 12.36 million dollars pipped Jackie Chan's chop-socky cop caper "Rush Hour 3," which took 12.25 million after the "Superbad" crew whacked it off the top spot last weekend.
Takings were lower than the fat hauls bagged by summer blockbusters such as "Spiderman 3," "Shrek the Third" and "Pirates of the Caribbean."
British comic Rowan Atkinson mugged his way into fourth place with "Mr Bean's Holiday," which took 10.1 million on its opening weekend. The latest feature sees the oddball character traveling in France.
Two other new releases followed in fifth and sixth place. High-octane fight-fest "War," a revenge tale that sees Chinese Triad gangsters squaring up to the Japanese Yakuza, took 10 million dollars.
Behind it came "The Nanny Diaries," a comedy about a working class nanny thrust into the uber-rich culture of Manhattan's Upper East Side, that has been compared to "The Devil Wears Prada." The new release took 7.8 million.
The first big-screen adventures of America's most dysfunctional animated family, "The Simpsons Movie," took 4.4 million dollars to rank seventh in its fifth week of release.
In eighth place with four million was "Stardust," a fantasy drama featuring Robert DeNiro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes and Peter O'Toole.
"Hairspray," a makeover of the Broadway musical with John Travolta dancing in high heels as Edna Turnblad, fell to ninth with 3.4 million.
Science-fiction thriller "The Invasion," starring Nicole Kidman as a psychiatrist who discovers an alien epidemic, slipped to 10th place with 3.1 million dollars.
Trailing were "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," in 11th with 2.5 million dollars in its 12th week of release, and Disney's "Underdog," in 12th (2.24 million).
08/26/2007 18:52 GMT