"You've Got Mail" nabbed the top spot of the weekend box office with an estimated $18.7 million, but it was a second-class victory, considering how low the total turnout was at theaters. Overall ticket sales were less than $75 million, which is a 24 percent drop from the same weekend last year when "Titanic" led the pack with $28.6 million. Experts blame the drop on the attacks on Iraq and that pesky impeachment thing, which have monopolized moviegoers' attention. As for "Mail"'s prospects, its gross was $1 million more than the 1993 opening take of "Sleepless in Seattle" (which went on to earn $126.7 million). But people may perceive "Mail" as a sequel -- thanks to its repeating creative team of Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, and Nora Ephron -- and sequels generally do well at first, but have a steeper drop-off.

The other major new release, "The Prince of Egypt," landed in second place with a middling $14.3 million: not quite the stellar debut of other recent animated films such as "A Bug's Life" ($45.7 million over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend) and "The Rugrats Movie" ($27.3 million). Although DreamWorks anticipated the movie's religious themes to perform better in middle America, most of its returns came from large cities. "Bug's" -- which battled "Egypt"'s opening by adding well-publicized new fake bloopers to its end credits -- remained in a strong third place with $9.5 million. (Filling out the top 5 were "Star Trek: Insurrection," with $8.5 million, and "Jack Frost," with $5 million.)

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