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Well, that was nice. Short, but sweet. The American box office’s brief one-week reprise from being beaten by last year’s results ended over the weekend despite the added benefit of the Easter holiday. The top 10 films made $94.7 million, compared with the $116.3 million made in the same weekend last year. The results were also down 9.7% from the $104.7 million made over 2007’s Easter weekend.

Though 2008 started off strongly, and is still up 5.6% over last year the year-to-date period in 2007, recent weakness (and strength last year) has made for difficult comparisons of late. With the popular summer season not boasting the same amount of must-seeness as 2007, prepare yourself to hear about lower results essentially from here on out.

For two weeks running, the top film over the weekend was Fox’s “Horton Hears a Who”, which lost 44.2% of its audience and hearing to make $25.1 million. The children’s comedy has made $86.5 million total.

The weekend’s three new releases took places two through four with generally solid debuts. Second place went to Lions Gate Film’s “Meet the Browns”, which banked $20 million in relatively limited release (2,006 theaters compared to Horton’s 3,961). Cowen and Co. analysts, who monitor Lions Gate, said” Browns” would likely beat the $40 million total Cowen forecast the film to make. “We expect the [filmmaker] Tyler Perry franchise to continue to be a revenue and profit driver for Lions Gate in the future,” Cowen said, noting that two new Tyler Perry films were scheduled to be released in the company’s 2009 fiscal year.

The weekend’s third-place finisher was Fox’s “Shutter,” a horror film about a smudged camera lens. The film focused on developing $10.7 million over the weekend, meaning that with Horton’s take, News Corp. has little to be, ahem, negative about. (This is what is known as a tripod of puns.)

Flashing into fourth place was Paramount’s “Drillbit Taylor”, which made $10.2 million despite a generous marketing campaign. The relatively weak showing of the film could possibly be related to audiences thinking it was a Bob Vila biopic, or perhaps bullies across the country simply intimidated audiences away from seeing the film, which is about students hiring a bodyguard to protect them from a schoolyard brute.

Next week sees the release of war drama “Stop-Loss,” crime drama “21″ and spoof “Superhero Movie.” In other words, buckle up, because things aren’t going to get easy any time soon.

With all the talk of turmoil in the credit and housing markets, it’s sometimes forgotten that major problems are prevalent in other segments of the economy. In the U.S. box office, where the country exports a whopping 78% of its one-liners, weekly results have fallen behind the year-ago period for a fifth consecutive week.

The top 10 films made $87.1 million for the weekend, down a troubling 35.8% from the $135.7 million last year. Of course, much of this can be credited to strength last year rather than weakness this year, as total 2008 results in total are still running comfortable ahead of 2007 by more than 10%.

Last year saw the period action film “300″ debut with an enormous $70.9 million take. That kind of tally is rarely seen outside the summer and winter holiday seasons, making any new release this year pale by comparison. Thus, the winner of this year’s pale award was Warner Bros.’s “10,000 B.C.,” which arrived in first place with $35.7 million, or about half of 300’s debut.

The film, an action-adventure set at the dawn of humanity, was beset with terrible reviews, negative audience word-of-mouth and a fierce boycott by the Geico cavemen characters. With such strikes against it, the film probably won’t have much time before it goes extinct like the mighty saber-toothed tiger, which in the film is defeated by early humans squirting it with a giant stone water bottle.

The second-place winner over the weekend was “College Road Trip,” a comedy produced by Disney unit Buena Vista. The film made $14 million, benefiting from the family-friendly G-rating and active fan base of star Raven-Symone. The weekend’s third new film, Lions Gate’s “The Bank Job,” came in fifth place, stealing $5.7 million. The relatively weaker results aren’t very surprising considering that the film was released in almost 2,000 fewer theaters than 10,000 B.C.

Among the holdovers, last week’s top film “Semi-Pro” lost a hefty 61.9% of its audience, dropping to fourth place with a $5.8 million gross in its second weekend. The New Line release has scored a lame $24.7 million total. Even “Vantage Point,” which has been out for a week longer than Semi-Pro, made more money this weekend, coming in third place with $7.5 million. The film has made an impressive $51.7 million for Sony Pictures.

The string of disappointing weeks may end next week, as Fox’s family comedy “Horton Hears a Who” opens. Fox has saturated available every ad space with publicity for the film, which prompts the question of whether anyone hasn’t heard what Horton hears.