This is why the average reader thinks film critics are detached: A filmmaker I’ve spent 15 years praising makes a movie I don’t much care for, and that’s the movie that turns out to be his biggest hit.

Not that the $35.9 million opening-weekend gross on “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” is anything other than an indicator of how many people bought tickets; I have no idea whether audiences are responding positively to Guillermo del Toro’s overstuffed, strangely empty wonderment, just that they went to see it in droves.

Well, not droves, exactly; “Hancock” came in at #2 with $33 million, “Journey to the Center of the Earth” pulled an impressive $20.6 million for third place and “WALL-E” held the #4 spot with another $18.5 million, so the weekend’s business was split more evenly than usual.

The biggest surprise? Eddie Murphy’s “Meet Dave” flat-out tanked, opening in seventh place with a truly feeble $5.3 million, his worst opening weekend since “The Adventures of Pluto Nash”.

Getting back to that whose readers-and-critics disconnect, I must admit I didn’t think “Pluto Nash” was that bad. Does this mean I have to see “Meet Dave” now, too?

Ah, crap.