Can Tom Cruise Return to Box Office Glory?

Tom Cruise's new action movie, "Knight and Day," finished a disappointing third in its weekend debut, with $20.5 million for three days (and a total of $27.7 million in its five-day run that opened Wednesday). That the Fox flick finished behind "Toy Story 3," even though that movie opened the previous weekend, was not surprising given the monster Pixar-Disney franchise. But to fall behind Adam Sandler's opening "Grown Ups," a comedy that The New York Times described as "lazy, mean-spirited, incoherent, infantile and, above all, witless," is something else.

"I'm told test screenings were troubled, with audiences cruelly complaining that Tom Cruise is 'weird' and [co-star] Cameron Diaz is 'old,'" writes Deadline Hollywood's Nikki Finke. Others speculate that Cruise will never recover from his couch-jumping episode on Oprah. (Largely unmentioned are his much zanier pronouncements for Scientology).

No one's questioning acting chops -- he gave a memorable, if minor, performance in "Tropic Thunder" -- but can he carry another blockbuster?

However, it's not Cruise's non-movie activities that are hurting him, it's his movie choices. He had the opportunity to star in another thriller, "The Tourist," to be helmed by Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck, who directed the magnificent German Oscar winner, "The Lives of Others." (That movie settled on Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie.)

Instead, he chose "Knight and Day," which The New Yorker describes as "jumpy, unmotivated and senseless." Of course, those terms could also be applied to a lot of successful summer fare -- the "Transformers" franchise, for example -- but "Knight and Day" is an original (if unoriginal) movie and doesn't arrive with the pre-packaged buzz.

Of course, there's always "Mission Impossible IV," which is scheduled for next year. But perhaps if Tom Cruise wants to get back on top, he should try a novel Hollywood idea: make a good movie.