Shrek Forever After, which will likely turn out to be the lowest-grossing film in the franchise, still had enough muscle to dominate the worst Memorial Day weekend box office in years.  Hollywood’s take was 15% below last year’s and the worst total in nine years.  If ticket prices are adjusted for inflation and just admissions are counted, it’s the weakest Memorial Day showing in 15 years.  Both the Presidents Day and Martin Luther King holiday weekends this year were bigger.

So far Shrek Forever After, which took in $55.7 million over the weekend, has brought in $145.5 million, but in spite of high 3D and IMAX ticket prices, the film is likely to end up $30 million short of the original 2001 Shrek’s $267.7 million, the lowest total of the three previous films in the series.

Disney’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which is based on a well-known video game and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates of the Caribbean), earned a disappointing $37.8 million over the 4-day weekend and finished in second place.  So far Prince has earned $89.5 million overseas where it was the weekend’s top release, but with production costs estimated between $150 million and $200 million, the film will have a very hard time breaking even.  The audience for Prince was 58% male and 58% over 25.  With mixed reviews, the highly-kinetic film, which has several graphic novel tie-ins, will have to find favor with younger audiences to reverse its fortunes in the coming weeks.

Sex in the City 2 came in a close third with an estimated $37.1 million over the four-day weekend, but its five-day total (it opened on Thursday) is less than that of the original film’s 3-day debut.  Attendance has declined every single day since SITC 2 opened.  The opening weekend audience was 90% female compared with 83% for the original, and the audience was older, with nearly half the patrons over 35.  Throw in devastatingly bad reviews and it’s clear that there is no chance that the sequel will end up in the first film’s $150 million neighborhood.

However it does appear that another, much more successful sequel Iron Man 2, which added $20.6 million to bring its domestic cumulative to $279.2 million, will end up close to the $318.4 million total of the original 2008 Iron Man.

The Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe Robin Hood is not doing quite as well.  It earned an estimated $13.6 million during its third weekend.  With a domestic cumulative of $86.3 million, it appears unlikely that film will be able to even get close to the $165.5 million total of Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, a film that was contemptuously dismissed by Crowe, but which amassed its total in an era when the average ticket price was under $4.

Three romantic comedies that have consistently demonstrated strong “legs,” Letters to Juliet, Just Wright, and Date Night took the sixth, seventh, eighth spots respectively.  These long-running romcoms will face additional competition next week as Killers with Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher, and Get Him to the Greek with Russell Brand open.

The pathetic MacGruber plummeted to #9 with an execrable per theater average of just $746.  The lame spoof will finish its run as the worst SNL-inspired film yet.  Meanwhile How to Train Your Dragon ended up at #10 in the 10th week of its stellar run.