This past weekend’s movie box office tallies provided more evidence that U.S. audiences are tired of gloom and doom from the popular culture. Producer-writer-director-actor Tyler Perry’s comedy Why Did I Get Married? led with $21.5 million in sales, displacing another comedy, The Game Plan, which came in a distant second by bringing in $11.5 million.

The George Clooney left-wing legal drama Michael Clayton and the Mark Wahlberg-Joaquin Phoenix crime drama We Own the Night tied for third with $11 million apiece in the preliminary reports.

The Farelly brothers film The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben Stiller in a comedy depending on personal discomfort for its effects, fell to fifth in its second week, taking in $7.3 million, a very poor number in light of Stiller’s proven box-office appeal—his last movie, the charming and amusing Night at the Museum, brought in well over $100 million in its first ten days.

Perry’s film includes plenty of conflicts among the characters, as all sucessful narratives must, in dealing with the difficulties of four married couples, but it fully reflects the filmmaker’s usual sense of optimism and positive values. According to Reuters, "Industry pundits had largely marked down the movie’s chances, despite Perry’s success with such chart-toppers as 2005’s ‘Diary of a Mad Black Woman‘ ($21.9 million opening), and 2006’s ‘Madea’s Family Reunion’ ($30 million opening)."

Interestingly, Madea’s Family Reunion had an even more clearly positive concept than Why Did I Get Married? and did even better as a consequence.

Perry’s strong appeal to a "nontraditional" and largely black audience prevailed despite low expectations among industry insiders. According to Reuters, Tom Ortenberg, the studio’s president of distribution,

said Perry’s movies, which incorporate themes of family and personal redemption, speak to a "nontraditional moviegoing audience" that does not show up in pre-release studies. "We aren’t the least bit surprised" by the opening, he said.

Critics and industry pundits thought Warner Bros had a great shot at winning the competition with Michael Clayton, but the conspiracy thriller was buried by the Perry juggernaut. The studio is saying it’s satisfied with the first-weekend take and believe that the strong reviews will enable the film will do good business in the coming weeks, but they cannot be happy about its performance so far.