Excuse me while I pull my jaw off the floor.

Last weekend, "Fast & Furious" revved into the nation's megaplexes, zooming off with more than $70 million in box office receipts. It was the biggest opening of the year and the biggest April opening ever, beating the $42.2 million of "Anger Management" in 2003.

Must be a heck of a movie, huh?

Actually, "Fast & Furious" is a mediocre piece of Hollywood dreck, an opinion that I suspect would be confirmed by most of the folks who happily slapped down their $10 to watch it.

The fourth entry in a franchise that was never interesting to begin with, it's an action effort in which both the cops and the crooks zip around Los Angeles and environs in souped-up, nitro-burning cars, cheered on by hordes of nameless, bare-midriffed young women.

Shiny cars and skinny women. Toss in fireplug Vin Diesel and pretty boy Paul Walker (the stars of the original "The Fast and the Furious" in 2001) and you've got a package moviegoers couldn't resist.

Just how irresistible "Fast & Furious" was shocked even the bigwigs at Universal, who had projected an opening weekend take of about $35 million.

As one who thinks movies should aspire to being more than just a roller coaster ride (get on, do a few loop-the-loops without actually going anywhere), I view all this with grim bemusement.

I subscribe to the great cynic H.L. Menken's observation that "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

You'd think that after years of awful movies dominating the box office I'd have become numb enough to not care anymore.

But I do.

I can understand why, in this grim economy, people just want a little brainless entertainment. "Fast & Furious" certainly qualifies.

What gnaws at me is the thought that if mediocre movies are so rewarded, what's the point of striving to make a good movie?