That’s not all. Against some theoretically stiff, star-driven competition, our #2 film turns out to be a lowish budget, live-action version of a series of young adult comic books with no spectacular effects and no superstars — though young Chloe Moretz of “Kick-Ass” might be one fairly shortly. “Diary of Wimpy Kid” nailed an estimated $21.8 million for Fox on the strength of what appears to be a lot of kid-friendly low comedy.

It was perhaps a slightly humiliating result for the film that was supposed to be the #2 film this weekend. As we discussed last time, “The Bounty Hunter” benefits from two big stars and a strong ad campaign. Still, it’s terrible reviews appear to have been an indication of something other than a bunch of effete, “irrelevant” snobs who don’t know how to have fun or something. It’s just possible that “regular people” aren’t enjoying it much more than critics did.

Nevertheless, the action-oriented rom-com did hit the low end of expectations with an estimated $21 million. That’s close enough that it’s not impossible that the “actuals” could actually change the rankings when they come out. My hunch, however, is that, if they’re different, they’ll be different in the disfavor of “Bounty Hunter.” In any case, they can’t undo the reality that “Wimpy Kid” has already made an amount exceeding its budget ($15 million according to Box Office Mojo; $19 million according to Nikki Finke). At $40 million, “The Bounty Hunter” is not an expensive movie by Hollywood standards, but it took the very expensive marketing equivalent of carpet bombing to not beat the arguably under-promoted family film for the #3 spot.

Still, if “The Bounty Hunter” was stung, the oddly topical “Repo Men” got its internal organs ripped out with an extremely poor fourth place estimate of about $6.15 million.  It’s yet another fiscal setback for Universal despite an instantly understandable premise and lots of advertising and marketing. My hunch here is that the action audience is not as hungry for straight-up gore as the horror audience. Also, its marketing seems muddled in terms of whether it was trying to sell it as a straight-up science fiction action film despite an inherently satirical premise. “Repo Men” seems to have pleased fairly few in the process but, by the numbers, its reviews were more than twice as good as for “The Bounty Hunter” for what that’s worth.

This week’s box office winner in terms of per-screen averages is the comedy-drama from Noah Baumbach, “Greenberg.” Though only playing on three screens, the film managed a terrific $120,000 for Focus Features. It benefits from an unusually big star for a limited release in Ben Stiller, not to mention sexy/likable possible-superstar-to-be Greta Gerwig in the female lead, and a writer-director who is a known quantity to the indie-audience thanks to his success with “The Squid and the Whale” and his association with Wes Anderson. Considering the plugged-in nature of the audience in New York and Los Angeles that tends to goes to indie films on opening weekends, it’s also tempting to wonder if the controversy, which I’ve been personally guilty of promoting, around critic Armond White’s beyond-over-the-top personal hatred for Noah Baumbach and, more to the point, for Baumbach’s ex-film critic mother, might have boosted interest just a touch. We’ll see what happens when “Greenberg” goes wider next week.

As for the #2 spot, the appeal of Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler seems to be working, as per the mysteries of “tracking,” for “The Bounty Hunter.” The film aroused some serious vitriol, however, from our own David Medsker, who has lost all patience with Ms. Aniston. It’s not doing much better with critics as a whole. Scott Tobias of the A.V. Club opines that:

Based on the onscreen evidence, not a single person in front of or behind the camera cared a whit about how The Bounty Hunter turned out…Some movies are passion projects; The Bounty Hunter is an inertia project.

That’s actually mild compared to the zinger Tobias ends his review with. As you might guess, it’s Rotten Tomatoes rating as of this writing is pretty bad, a very lowly 8%.

Still, audience members may be lured by the film’s effective advertising. Its effective advertising promises a lively ride as a sort of two-fisted spin on “It Happened One Night,” though the PG-13 “Bounty Hunter” is apparently more of an attempt at a light-hearted actioner than the action-packed rom-com you’d expect from the marketing.

DiOrio and Kilday are guesstimating $20-23 million for Sony. Sounds doable to me, though the second weekend might have a huge drop if the film is as much of a creative misfire as it sounds.

Next up is Fox’s PG-rated “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” based on a popular series of young adult “novels in cartoon.” (My pet peeve: why can’t we just call them comics?) I have to say that I hope the movie is much better than the trailer, which I found completely unfunny — just a collection of pale sub-“Wonder Years” jokes. The reviews seem to promise something at least a little better, with “Kid” dividing critics somewhat, though no one seems all that excited in either direction.

In any case, the popularity of the books, which actually started as a series of web-comics, appear to be boosting this one, as is the fact that it’s a family film that is being pitched as having a certain degree of adult appeal. For what it’s worth, “Wimpy Kid” also features Chloe Moretz, soon to be a pre-teen superstar with the release of “Kick-Ass.”

Rounding out the major new releases, we have the apparently more gruesome than you’d even expect, “Repo Men,” starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker as agents who repo organs from luckless deadbeats in a future where, as Roger Ebert implies, it appears that health care reform was permanently stalled. Though our own Will Harris found enough to like in the film, he’s in the definite minority of critics with only 16% finding much nice to say about it, according to the T-meter — and not a single “Top Critic” fully taking it to their still-in-place heart. Many are lingering over the film’s gore, which Will notes may be a bit much even for the strong-of-stomach.

It’s possible that that much grue in a non-horror context is simply not that appealing to audiences. The element of humor, which was supposed to be in their somewhere, I gather, seems to have been lost, and the action/thriller elements may seem muddled. It’s possible that, being reminded by the similar title, some people will stay home and rent 1984’s “Repo Man” instead, which gets a 97% on the Tomato-meter, btw. I know that, gore-phobe that I am, that’s what I’d do.

There’s more going on this weekend, however, in terms of limited releases. According to the bean-counters extraordinaire at Box Office Mojo, “The Runaways,” a new film about the controversial underage punk-pop band is debuting at 244 theaters to mildly positive critical reaction. It may benefit from interest from those of us elderly enough to remember the late seventies band that more or less  invented girl power. For younger viewers, the presence of its two very young stars, Kristen Stewart as the young Joan Jett and the now unbelievably 16 year-old and, dare I say it, sexy Dakota Fanning, might help.

If I wasn’t already feeling like a skeez after writing the above, I am now  forced by the vagaries of film release patterns to mention the name of Roman Polanski. His critically praised and, so far, commercially solid political thriller, “The Ghost Writer,” is about to be a much less limited release, and will be expanding up to 819 theaters this weekend.

The first excites me quite a bit as it features the great Michael Caine and is the beneficiary of some very good buzz. Caine is an actor I’ve always kind of loved, but after being assigned to look at some of his lesser known films and doing some research writing up his bio, the admiration I’ve always had kind of turned into awe. I could go and on about that, and kind of did in the bio. Anyhow, “Harry Brown” appears to be an intelligent spin on the vigilante film, and that’s probably enough of an intro. Check it out, courtesy of Rope of Silicon.

And, not to be confused with the 1984 cult classic, “Repo Man” we have “Repo Men,” cowritten by Eric Garcia, who also wrote its basis, the science fiction novel, The Repossession Mambo, and wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where that could be the movie’s title. And, like I alluded to in the name of this post, this one is red-banded for its fairly matter of fact portrayal of organ removal as perpetrated by Jude Law and Forest Whitaker. As a gore phobe, and organ removal I suppose is the definition of gore, I’m still trying to figure out why this doesn’t bother me more.