‘Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ beat by ‘Mission Impossible,’ ‘Chipmunks’ at holiday box office

It seems most of you didn’t want to spend the holiday with Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig and “Dragon Tattoo.” (Merrick Morton - Columbia TriStar Marketing Group) David Fincher’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” may be one of the most anticipated films of 2011, but it’s not what most movie-goers wanted to see this Christmas weekend.

The film brought in $19.4 million over the four-day weekend (Friday to Monday), coming in fourth behind “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” ($46.2 million), “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” ($31.8 million) and — wait for it — “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” ($20 million).

“Dragon Tattoo” — a new adaptation of the first book in Stieg Larsson’s trilogy — grossed $27.8 million in its first six days. It cost between $90 to $100 million to make, according to the L.A. Times.

So did Rooney Mara bleach her eyebrows for nothing? It’s too soon to say for sure, but the film’s opening was disappointing to some.

Jeff Bok of the box office site Exhibitor Relations, told E! the holiday opening was the “equivalent to a lump of coal, especially for a film that brings along this much fanfare.” Indeed, the film has been hyped with posters, trailers of varying lengths and even a Lisbeth Salander-inspired H&M line. The L.A. Times, however, described the opening as “decent business.”

The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday gave the film two and a half stars, saying it is “at once satisfying and underwhelming, a pristine, cooly atmospheric procedural thriller that comes to the party a tad overdressed in inexplicably breathless hype.” The film has a 78 percent fresh rating among top critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Celebritology’s Jen Chaney questioned whether or not it was necessary for Fincher to make the film just two years after the Swedish version was released in the U.S. Chaney concluded that the new film stood on its own merits, but perhaps we’re still seeing a little “Dragon Tattoo” fatigue.

Did you see “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” during its opening weekend? Are you planning to see the film in the future, perhaps ringing in the new year with Lisbeth? Tell us in the comments.