Neil Patrick Harris – awards show host with the most, sitcom star, and two-time Emmy winner – can now add box office draw to his laurels.

Of course he has some fuzzy blue forest dwellers to thank for that.

NHP in The Smurfs made a stronger-than-expected showing at the box office this weekend grossing an estimated $36.2 million. That put it in a tie at the top with Cowboys & Aliens, a flick starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford as Old West gunslingers fending off an alien attack.

Final numbers will be released on Monday when one of the films will likely nudge ahead.

His latest thriller, Unknown, was widely panned but audiences did not stay away. The film grossed an estimated $21.8 million in its debut weekend to edge past fellow newcomer I Am Number Four which took in an impressive $19.5 million, according to studio estimates.

These two strong debuts pushed last weekend’s top films down a notch or two.

In third place was Disney’s animated Gnomeo and Juliet featuring the music of Elton John. The film held very well losing just 23 percent of its audience from last weekend with estimated ticket sales of $19.4 million and a two-week total of $50.4 million. It should add plenty more on the Presidents Day holiday with kids out of school.

The Jennifer Aniston-Adam Sandler comedy Just Go With It fell from first to fourth place but still performed strongly with a second week gross of $18.2 million and a 10-day total of $60.7 million.

Rounding out the top five was the weekend’s third new wide release: the comedy Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son. The third film in this franchise opened with an estimated gross of $17 million.

This relegated Justin Bieber’s film Never Say Never to sixth place after last weekend’s second place opening. It took in an estimated $13.6 million for a two-week total of $51.7 million.

For a full box office report and chart, I recommend you go to Hollywood.com!

After the horrible The Bounty Hunter and the boring Love Happens, I didn’t even bother checking her out in last summer’s The Switch.

But it was my big sister’s birthday this weekend and I treated her to lunch and a movie – her choice. She picked Just Go With It starring Miss Aniston and Adam Sandler with a hilarious turn by Nicole Kidman.

The movie was very enjoyable,. quite funny in parts and very sweet in others. The best part is the undeniable chemistry between Sandler and Aniston.

Just Go With It is not only good, it ends a box office losing streak for Jennifer since the movie opened in first place with an estimated $31 million in ticket sales. It goes in the hit column for the former Friends star along with Marley & Me, The Break-Up, Along Came Polly, He’s Just Not That Into You and Bruce Almighty.

Just Go With It managed to edge past Justin Bieber’s new 3D flick Never Say Never which took in an estimated $30 million.

I just don’t get the Bieber fever thing but then again, I’m so clearly not a teen girl.

Elton John and Disney had to settle for third place with the animated flick Gnomeo and Juliet, which features Elton’s music, opening in third place. But it took in a strong $25.5 million and scored the highest February opening in history for an animated film, according to Paul Dergarabedian of Hollywood.com.

In fourth place was Channing Tatum’s new flick The Eagle which took in an unimpressive $8.6 million in its debut weekend and will likely fade from view fast. Pity this film is not more successful since while making it, the hunky Channing suffered a humiliating on-set injury [Read about it HERE].

Rounding out the top five is The Roommate which grossed an estimated $8.4 million in its second weekend in theaters. The thriller has taken in $26 million to date.

Do you remember your first college roommate?

The poor guy who roomed with me at Olmeca Hall my first semester at SDSU was nice enough but we had no chemistry and were never friends. The next semester he moved to his fraternity house and I moved down the hall with one of my best friends.

I’m just glad neither of those guys were psychos like Leighton Meester in this weekend’s top movie The Roommate which grossed an estimated $15.6 million in its first three days, according to Hollywood.com.

Writes Hollywoodcom’s Paul Dergarabedian: Having appeal for the female audience in particular, this variation on Single White Female set in a college dormitory proved to be a counter-programming draw for those looking for a sanctuary from the football madness going on at home and gives Screen Gems yet another profit-maker.

In second place was the weekend’s other new wide release Sanctum which took in an estimated $9.2 million with 17 percent of its gross coming from IMAX screens.

Last weekend’s number one movie, The Rite starring Anthony Hopkins, took a hard tumble all the way down to number six. It managed just $5.5 million – a 62 percent drop in business – for a two-week total of $23.7 million.

Faring far better is the Ashton Kutcher-Natalie Portman romantic comedy No Strings Attached which finished in third place earning an estimated $8.4 million for a three-week total of $51.8 million.

The King’s Speech, widely seen as the front-runner to take home the best picture Oscar, has turned out to be a big hit which means many of the viewers of the Oscar telecast will have actually heard of it! In its 11th week in theaters, the film took in an estimated $8.3 million for fourth place and has earned $84.1 million to date.

Rounding out the top five is The Green Hornet which is fading fast but managed to gross an estimated $6.1 million in its fourth weekend for an overall gross of $87.2 million.

GREG’S PICK: I finally got around to seeing The Fighter this weekend which I can promise you is superb. A best picture nominee, this movie is so well-acted by the entire cast that I am stunned it did not take home the Screen Actors Guild Award last weekend for best ensemble.

But the staggeringly good Melissa Leo and Christian Bale did win SAG Awards (and Golden Globes) and have to be considered front-runners to win well-deserved Academy Awards. They are both so very good as are Mark Wahlberg and Amy Adams.

Anyway, The Fighter dropped out of the top 10 in its ninth week in theaters finishing in 11th place. The boxing drama added $2.9 million for an overall gross of $82.5 million.

After spending nearly two weeks covering the TV Critics Assn. Press Tour, I haven’t had the chance to catch any of the current movies.

But first on my list is The Kids Are All Right which finally landed in the top 10 with a weekend estimated gross of $2.6 million, according to box office figures from Hollywood.com.

Kids stars Annette Bening and Julianne Moore (both four-time Academy Award nominees) as a longtime couple raising two children. Their lives are turned upside down when their daughter, about to leave for college, tracks down her sperm donor father (Mark Ruffalo).

Focus Features acquired the film at the Sundance Film Festival for $5 million and has already more than made back their investment now that the film has grossed $14 million to date.

The buddy cop drama The Other Guy starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg debuted in first place with estimated ticket sales of $35.6 million. It’s the second-highest opening ever for Ferrell.

Guy knocked the Leonardo DiCaprio thriller Inception out of the top spot after three weekends in first place. Still, Inception took second place with a gross of $18.6 million and has grossed $227.7 million in just 24 days.

Debuting in third place was Disney’s Step Up 3D which took in $15.5 million, according to studio estimates.

I don’t know about you, but I think Hollywood is overplaying the 3D card and I’m not eager to pay the extra money to rent the darn glasses required to see these films. I believe frequent moviegoers should have the option of buying these glasses themselves for repeated use.

Of course, the real point is to make as much money as possible but alienating us just results in me skipping these flicks unless the niece and nephew really want to see it with their uncle Greg.

The critically-acclaimed film is about a lesbian couple (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) whose lives are turned upside down when their two kids track down their sperm donor daddy (Mark Ruffalo).

It has had a slow roll out over the past four weeks to build word of mouth momentum and added 646 locations on Friday for a total of 847 theaters overall.

Overall, the film has grossed $9.6 million.

The Leonardo DiCaprio thriller Inception, directed by Chris Nolan, was number one for the third week in a row grossing an estimated $27.5 million and will cross the $200 million mark in the next few days.

In second place was the new Steve Carell-Paul Rudd comedy Dinner With Schmucks ($23.3 million), followed by Angelina Jolie’s Salt ($19.2 million), Despicable Me ($15.5 million) and the new release Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore which co-stars the fabulous Neil Patrick Harris in a human role and the divine Bette Midler as one of the voices of a lead CG-animated character.

Adorable Zac Efron’s new flick, Charlie St. Cloud, debuted just out of the top five in sixth place with an opening of $12.1 million.

Yeah, The Twilight Sage: Eclipse and Toy Story 3 are still making gobs of money and the new animated flick Despicable Me had a stunning $60 million debut this weekend, but I’m more interested in the box office returns of The Kids Are all Right.

This movie has gotten the kind of acclaim that Oscar hopefuls dream about. It opened in just seven theaters and managed to gross a stellar $505,000. That means each theater showing the film grossed an average of $72,127 over the weekend – the highest per theater average of any movie released so far in 2010.

Kids stars Annette Bening and Julianne Moore (both four-time Academy Award nominees) as a longtime couple raising two children. Their lives are turned upside down when their daughter, about to leave for college, tracks down her sperm donor father (Mark Ruffalo).

Focus Features acquired the film at the Sundance Film Festival for $5 million and it looks like the studio will make that back and more at this rate. They plan to expand the movie into 37 theaters on Friday as word-of-mouth momentum continues with a wider release a few weeks away.

By that time, everyone will want to see The Kids Are All Right.

It was, I think, the victim of savage critics who were far harder on Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha than they needed to be.

After just 25 days in theaters, the movie dropped out of the top 10 after grossing just $2.4 million last weekend at the domestic box office.

But I’m not ready to say goodbye to my favorite ladies and I think the franchise can redeem itself with a terrific third movie. We just can’t let it all end this way!

Warner Bros., which sometimes confirms sequels on opening weekends of their predecessors if the numbers are big enough, has been mum on future installments which had at one time seemed a given.

The move has not exactly been a flop: it’s domestic gross currently stands at $90.6 million and it has earned an additional $157.2 million in foreign markets. That’s a worldwide total of $247.8 million.

Money talks!

Paul reports that the Joan Rivers documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, from IFC earned an impressive $171,500 in just seven theatres and a per-theatre average of $24,500.  Great reviews and Rivers’ high-profile made this a solid performer this weekend.

Now on to the top movies overall. Paul writes:

Who would have thought that the oft-maligned 80’s would come in and the save the box-office day with a pair of Phil Collins-era retro hits?  Well, if the much higher than expected gross on The Karate Kid is any indication, lovers of the 80’s are a much bigger group than anyone could have imagined.  With a whopping $56 million debut, Jaden Smith proves that the box-office apple does not fall far from the money tree.

Following perfectly in the time warp theme of the weekend, Fox’s The A-Team provided a solid second place finish with $26 million.  Good reviews and solid word-of-mouth should keep this one in the summer mix for the next few weeks.   With an ensemble cast that includes Liam Neeson and the ever-popular Bradley Cooper, look for “A-Team” to remain a staple of the box-office top five.

Shrek is living forever after in the top tier of the box-office chart that is at number three with another $15.8 million.  The Paramount/DWA release has earned $210 million to date and still performed well in its fourth weekend of release despite the pull of The Karate Kid for families.

At number four is Universal’s Get Him to the Greek with a second weekend gross of $10.1 million.  Debuting last week at number two, the film got a high profile boost from the MTV Movie Awards with a memorable appearance by the stars of the film.  With a domestic total of $36.5 million, the film is performing in line with comedies from this creative bloodline and should continue to do well in the coming weeks.

Rounding out the top five is Lionsgate’s Killers starring Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl with a weekend total of $8.2 million and a total to date of $30.7 million.  After a debut at number three last week, the film remains in the top five and offers a nice date night at the movies for couples looking for something they can both enjoy.

The second feature film in the franchise finished third over the Memorial Day weekend behind first place Shrek Forever After and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

With $51.4 million earned from Thursday through Monday, the sequel’s five-day performance still fell short of its 2008 predecessor’s opening weekend by $5 million. Internationally, SATC2  earned $27.6 million from 17 markets and opens in 20 more this week.

It’s worldwide total currently stands just under $70 million.

The sequel had a production budget of $100 million and cost probably at least that much to market. I’m concerned that the returns won’t be high enough to justify a third film and that would be a real pity.

The day one figure is the sixth highest Thursday opening ever, edging out the $13.4 million grossed on the same day a year ago by Terminator Salvation.

Two years ago, the first Sex and the City feature film grossed $26.8 million on its first day but that was a Friday and it was showing on more screens so it’s tough to make real comparisons. It went on to gross $57 million in its first four days.

If the numbers for the second film hold up, we certainly can expect a third film in the franchise which originated as an HBO series that lasted for six seasons and remains popular in syndication.

2004′s Sex and the City film was a blockbuster grossing $152.6 million domestically and another $262.6 million in foreign markets for a worldwide total of $415.2 million.

In Hollywood, money speaks a lot louder than reviews!

His new movie Dear John dethroned box office behemoth Avatar! The romantic drama (also starring the lovely Amanda Seyfried) grossed an estimated $32.4 million in its opening weekend relegating Avatar to second place after a seven week reign at the top.

No need crying for Avatar though. The James Cameron-directed epic took in an additional $23.6 million for an overall domestic take of $630 million (I’m not even gonna get into the international numbers which are equally gaudy).

But the fact remains that for this weekend at least, Channing Tatum is King of the World!

It is just astounding how many people flocked to the movies over the Christmas Day weekend resulting in the first $280 million weekend in domestic box office history. The previous weekend best was the $260 million earned in July 2008 when The Dark Knight opened.

The record haul was due to a stellar second weekend for No. 1 film Avatar which grossed $75.6 million for a 10-day total of $212.3 million. The James Cameron-directed sci-fi epic has also earned $405 million in foreign markets for a worldwide total of $617 million so far.

Wow!

Following close behind was Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law which opened with $62.4 million in ticket sales, a record Christmas weekend bow. That was followed by Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel which had a weekend total of $49 million and has earned an astounding $75 million since opening on Dec. 23.

Then there was the Christmas Day release It’s Complicated, a romantic comedy starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.

The film had an opening weekend gross of $22 million and was one of the biggest openings of Streep’s career. The only Streep films to have opened bigger are Mamma Mia! ($27.7 million) and The Devil Wears Prada ($27.5 million). She also appeared in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events which had a $30 million opening but that was more of a Jim Carrey vehicle.

Streep was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her performance in Complicated and will compete against herself because she’s also nominated for Julie & Julia.

In another milestone, domestic ticket sales for 2009 jumped the $10 billion mark for the first time ever, according to Variety. This caps a record-breaking year that is running 12 percent ahead of last year in revenue and 5 percent ahead in attendance.

But plenty of people did – to the tune of a whopping $140.7 million in estimated ticket sales domestically since it premiered at midnight on Thursday. Worldwide ticket sales amounred to $258.8 million.

The opening of New Moon placed third on the all-time domestic chart behind last year’s $158.4 million opening weekend for The Dark Knight and the $151.1 million for Spider-Man 3 in 2007.

New Moon set an all-time domestic high for opening day on Friday with $72.7 million. That topped the previous record of $67.2 million had been held by The Dark Knight.

The film continues the story of teen romance between a school girl and a vampire (Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson), with the sequel adding a love triangle with a teen werewolf (Taylor Lautner).

It used to be that we loved Brad Pitt because he was so damned gorgeous. Well, he’s still gorgeous but we love him even more now because he has spoken out – repeatedly – for marriage equality.

So I raise my cup of iced coffee to Mr. Pitt this morning for coming in first in the weekend box office derby with his new movie Inglourious Basterds which took in an estimated $37.6 million in domestic ticket sales (that’s US and Canada).

Brad’s box office record includes some big hits like Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Oceans Eleven and its two sequels, Troy, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Seven and Interview With a Vampire but many of his most-acclaimed films failed to reach even the $60 million mark domestically including Babel, Fight Club, The Assassination of Jesse James, 12 Monkeys, Sleepers, Meet Joe Black,. Seven Years in Tibet and Snatch.

He seems to have most often been driven by the material rather than just commercial appeal which is why his star continues to burn brighter than his contemporary Tom Cruise who needs more Magnolia and Jerry Maguire and less of Mission Impossible.

Anyway, bravo Brad!

The super hot Channing Tatum became a bonafide movie star this weekend with his action flick GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra opening in first place with an estimated gross of $56.2 million- the fourth biggest August opening in history.

The movie took in another $44.3 million overseas for a worldwide total of just over $100 million.

Paramount Pictures seems to have made a smart choice in withholding the movie from critics. Those who saw it after it opened gave it mixed reviews at best, according to the Associated Press.

“The thing we saw from ‘Transformers’ is that with these kind of movies, at times critics have a hard time getting their arms around them,” Rob Moore, Paramount vice chairman told AP. “But the audience got exactly what it was. A fun summer movie, a great way to end your summer. You just relax and have a good time. You don’t have to worry about global politics or global warming.”

Sony Pictures successfully counter-programmed with Julie & Julia starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams enjoying an estimated $20 million.

My feeling is that Julie & Julia will enjoy some lengthy staying power while GI Joe could have a steep second weekend drop.