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Barring yet another groundswell surprise, August box office should be back to normal this weekend, with mediocre movies once again opening to mediocre levels. Order in entertainment inevitably reasserts itself, and maybe we can just pretend these last two weeks were a bit of a fever dream.

Leading the way with a Wednesday debut is Let's Be Cops, a film with not the greatest timing in the world, though I'm not convinced current events will have any real effect on the situation. Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr. play a couple of down on their luck idiots who dress as police for a costume party, and thanks to the reaction they get after being mistaken for real officers, decide to keep up the illusion. Answering real calls as fake police is, like, really illegal and stuff, but what's even worse is when they get involved in a high stakes drug trafficking sting with a Mexican drug lord (Andy Garcia, who I really would have thought had better things to do).

I know what you're saying – weirdest episode of New Girl ever, right? That it's an overblown sitcom seems to be both part of its charm and a big flaw in the film, with a fairly amateurish feel to the whole production. Or maybe a buddy cop movie without the cops, the kind of thing John Candy made when his career was struggling. Reviews savage it, but the trailers do have some genuinely funny moments, which may be enough to fool audiences for a short time. The jury's already in to some extent, with a $4 million Wednesday figure, which should translate into about $16 million for the weekend. For a comedy from a couple of untested leads, that's probably enough to be satisfied with, but just imagine if the movie had been good.

Four years ago, when the first Expendables movie was released, traditional action was in a pretty terrible place, and it looked like it needed this 80s throwback with ALL THE ACTION HEROS to make it come alive again. The last year or so finds the action genre in a much better place (indeed, with even a weekend with two simultaneous hits), so The Expendables 3 arrives in a market that really no longer needs it and may find it, uh, superfluous.

Where the first two movies were about a group of over the hill mercenaries being dragged out of retirement, this film seems to turn a bit inward, dealing with a threat to the Expendables team from one of its founders, played by Mel Gibson, who seems to be embracing the villain part of his career, or maybe just the fact that he might have one again. But in addition to the now familiar roster of Stallone, Statham, Li, Lundgren, Crews and Schwarzenegger, we get an appearance by just about every actor over the age of 50 who's ever held a gun in a movie, like Antonio Banderas, Wesley Snipes, Harrison Ford, and for some reason, Kelsey Grammer. There's also a nod to younger action with MMA star Ronda Rousey and Twilight himbo Kellan Lutz.

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