“Queen and Slim”
came in fourth place at the weekend box office. It’s not hard to
see why the film finished so low; it’s playing on fewer than half
the screens of higher-ranking holdovers “Frozen II,” “Knives
Out” and “Ford v Ferrari.” But I can also see why it finished
so high despite playing on fewer screens than the fifth- through
ninth-place finishers. Most of those movies are lousy also-rans that
couldn’t find an audience over the lucrative Thanksgiving weekend,
let alone the non-holiday follow-up. It’s just the kind of opening
that a small-but-solid performer like this needs to find relative
success. Another reason why this film is doing so well: it’s
actually pretty good.I could swear that the main characters
are not assigned the titular nicknames at
