Movies

LOS ANGELES – Beverly Hills Chihuahua was barking up the right tree with movie-goers, who put the Disney comedy at No. 1 for the weekend with a $29 million debut, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Featuring a talking Chihuahua with Drew Barrymore's voice, the family flick about a pampered pooch lost in Mexico led a surge of new movies that boosted Hollywood business, which generally has slumped the last two months.

The top-12 movies hauled in $95.4 million, up 42 percent from the same weekend a year ago, when The Game Plan was No. 1 with $16.6 million.

"We had a huge weekend," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. "That's really due to the little Chihuahua. The little dog made a big difference."

The previous weekend's No. 1 movie, the DreamWorks-Paramount thriller Eagle Eye, slipped to second-place with $17.7 million, raising its total to $54.6 million.

Hollywood's other new wide releases had fair to poor premieres.

Sony's Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, starring Michael Cera and Kat Dennings as teens who fall for each other on a wild New York City night, had a sturdy No. 3 debut of $12 million.

The Warner Bros. Western Appaloosa, which had played two weeks in a handful of theaters, expanded solidly to come in at No. 5 with $5 million. Appaloosa was directed by Ed Harris, who stars with Viggo Mortensen and Renee Zellweger.

Vivendi Entertainment's An American Carol, a satire of Hollywood's liberal politics from director David Zucker ("Airplane!"), debuted at No. 9 with $3.8 million. The movie stars Kevin Farley as a Michael Moore-type filmmaker aiming to abolish the Fourth of July holiday.

Universal's Flash of Genius, starring Greg Kinnear as the engineer who invented intermittent windshield wipers then spent decades suing automakers over the innovation, opened weakly with $2.3 million, finishing at No. 11.

Two other movies, the comedy How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and the apocalyptic Blindness, both bombed.