The Vegas drama "21" was an easy winner at the box office this weekend, earning a surprising $23.7 million. Looks like all the publicity the cast did (including star Jim Sturgess' appearance on this weekend's RT) and the escapist-fantasy appeal of 'beating the house' was a sure bet. Here's Jeffrey & Alison's review of "21." The rest of the box-office recap comes after the jump.

In second place was "Horton Hears A Who!" with $17.6M. The G-rated animated tale is now the first big hit of 2008 with more than $117M. Third place went to "The Superhero Movie," which debuted with a disappointing $9.5M total. Hopefully that low figure will force Hollywood to put a moratorium on the 'Spoof' genre. When the parody is lamer than the subject matter they're spoofing, shouldn't that tell the studios something's wrong?

Coming in fourth was "Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns" with $7.9M, showing Mr. Perry is as reliable as it gets in the movie biz when it comes to delivering audiences. Fifth place is almost too close to call, with "Drillbit Taylor" and "Shutter" -- two holdovers from last week -- duking it out.

The other new films this weekend flopped. "Stop-Loss" couldn't turn positive reviews into profit as it made only $4.5M on less than 1,500 screens to barely crack the Top 10. So not even a young, attractive and talented cast in a good movie can lure audiences to see an Iraq War film. That likely means Hollywood is done greenlighting projects that have anything to do with the war.

"Run Fatboy Run" from debuting director David Schwimmer didn't do well either. It earned only $2.3M on less than 1,200 screens

Next week should be interesting, with George Clooney starring and directing in the 1920's football comedy "Leatherheads" and Jodie Foster, Gerard Butler and Abigail Breslin starring in "Nims Island."