The comedy, starring Jason Bateman from the TV series "Arrested Development" and "Bridesmaids" breakaway star Melissa McCarthy, pulled in $36.6 million Friday to Sunday, according to preliminary figures released by tracking firm Exhibitor Relations.
Salon.com said that the movie "reaches impressive heights of laziness and idiocy;" the Toronto Star slammed it as a "sloppily made exercise of rip-offs and redemption;" and National Public Radio dismissed it as an "uninspired trudge of a road movie."
It was followed by the romantic zombie comedy "Warm Bodies," based on Isaac Marion's book of the same name and inspired by Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," which took $11.5 million in sales.
Director Steven Soderbergh's new suspense film, "Side Effects," starring Jude Law and Rooney Mara, opened third. The movie, which follows a woman who goes on antidepressant drugs after her husband is released from prison, pulled in $10 million.
Fourth was the Oscar-nominated romantic comedy "Silver Linings Playbook," starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, with $6.9 million, followed by "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunt," a horror movie twist on the classic fairy tale starring Jeremy Renner, with $5.8 million.
Horror flick "Mama," in which a shadowy being trails two young children rescued after being lost in the woods when their parents died, fell from fourth to sixth place with $4.3 million, followed by the Oscar-tipped Osama bin Laden manhunt movie "Zero Dark Thirty" with $4 million.
Director Ben Affleck's "Argo," the story of a bold CIA operation to rescue six US diplomats trapped by the 1979 hostage crisis in Iran, made the eighth spot, pulling in $2.5 million, followed by another Oscar nominee, Quentin Tarantino's blood-soaked spaghetti Western tribute "Django Unchained," with $2.3 million.
Rounding off the list was Sylvester Stallone's latest action movie, "Bullet to the Head," with $2 million.
Exhibitor Relations releases the final weekend box office returns on Monday.