From ABC:

Family vacation comedy ‘RV’ drove the box office this weekend, bringing in about $16.4 million to pass the acclaimed Sept. 11 drama ‘United 93,’ which debuted in second place.

‘United 93′ depicts the heroic passengers who tried to fight their hijackers on Sept. 11 before crashing in rural Pennsylvania. The film brought in about $11.6 million, according to box office estimates released today.

Last week you heard the cries of “It’s too soon!” and “America isn’t ready!” and yet, it turns out that we were. Numbers don’t lie. This weekend Americans went to box office and resoundingly declared that they were ready to see another tepid family comedy starring Robin Williams.

I for one am surprised. As a lot of critics have pointed out, it’s been almost a decade since Robin Williams last filmed a comedy. But when you consider what some of those films actually were - “Patch Adams,” “Flubber,” “Bicentennial Man,” “Fathers’ Day,” and “Jack” - well, this weekend’s result is very, very surprising.

I just didn’t think Americans were ready.

Also, many thought the movie would be too difficult for sensitive viewers to handle. After all, it takes an unflinching look at a very different time, though it was not so long ago. A time when the idea of filling a recreational vehicle with gasoline was a real option for the average American, and not something reserved for the very rich or very reckless. RVs average 7-10 miles per gallon, after all. Such an unflinching depiction of that pre-Iraq mentality was something I thought we wouldn’t be ready for until at least the end of the decade. I was wrong.

Further, the RV lifestyle is not without its grotesque complications, and the film refuses to blink in portraying what CNN calls “enough feces gags to make constipation sound like a viable lifestyle.” Many didn’t think our nation was ready to laugh at sewage so soon after Katrina. Many, it turns out, were wrong.

poo
[Poo: What a concept!]

Finally, RV was lacking in any kind of conceptual safeguard against Robin Williams being… Robin Williams. One cannot stop Williams, but one can hope to contain him by constructing a story that provides an excuse for his “wacky” “improvisations” - a rationale, if you will, for why he’s rapid-firing ironic non-sequiturs in the faces of the other characters and in defiance of anything germane to the plot. So the audience could say, “Oh, I see why he’s suddenly talking like a crazy Arab/gay stereotype/John Wayne/ squeaky child; it’s because he is actually a robot/genie/ man-posing-as-a-mouthy-old-lady/ child-trapped-in-an-adult-body/ nutty professor! That explains it, kind of!”

“RV” offers no such Wiliamsproofing. In fact, it looks like the kind of role that we forgive Steve Martin for taking (again and again) because we know that he’s probably only one Lichtenstein away from completing a set. I don’t know that Williams has any such higher calling, and I doubt we’ll all someday be able to view his collection. [In fact, I doubt we’ll ever really want to know what that “collection” actually is….] If one was going to watch Robin Williams in “RV,” one was going to have to accept his hijinx without the comfortable buffer of a high-concept excuse for his behavior. We pundits didn’t think America could stomach that. Not yet.

We pundits, as I’ve pointed out, were way off base. We underestimated America’s strength, its resolve, and its recuperative powers. This weekend, Americans stood up and said “It’s not too soon. We are ready. Bring it on!” And with the kind of determination that made our nation great, they marched into the theaters and absorbed the repeated blows of 98 minutes of “RV.” And they emerged into the bright daylight stronger, unbowed, and somehow wiser. Defiantly, they walked out of those theaters, bloodied but smiling, looked right in the face of Hollywood and spat, “Is that all you’ve got? That was nothing.”

Take that, nay-sayers. Take that, pundits. America is bigger than that. America is strong. Particularly in the stomach area.