Sandra Bullock’s return to the friendly confines of romantic comedy in The Proposal was overwhelmingly accepted by audiences, which gave the star her biggest opening ever with an estimated $34.1 million, indicating that there is a sizable audience hungering for this type of film.  Not that The Proposal had any discernable effect on the raunchy, R-rated The Hangover, which slipped just 16%, but had to settle for second place with an estimated $26.9 million.  With $152.9 million in the bank already, The Hangover is headed way over the $200 million barrier and should become the leading R-rated comedy of all time before it’s done.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): June 19-21, 2009

Pixar’s Up dropped just 30% while adding $21.3 million to its total to finish third, and the new high concept comedy from Harold Ramis, Year One, earned an estimated $20.2 million to grab the fourth spot.   With these four comedies all earning over $20 million, the overall box office inched ahead of last year for the first time in four weeks, a hopeful sign for Hollywood since Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen should further jolt the B.O. back to its winning ways next week.

Up has now earned $224.1 million and will overtake Star Trek ($239.4 million) in the next two weeks to become the #1 film of the year so far, though its reign will likely be short if the Transformers movie lives up to expectations.  Up will also lose most of its 3-D screens to Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, which opens July 1st, so the true test of Up’s legs will come in the first few weeks of July. 

Year One attracted a predominantly male (57%) and very young (47% under 21) audience, which means that the film is in grave danger of losing its crowd to the new Transformers movie (with world-class hottie Megan Fox), which opens at midnight on Tuesday.