After one week, you can call it a freak accident. Two weeks? Whatever, it’s January. But after three weeks and with ticket sales steadily shooting toward the 100 million dollar mark, there’s no excuse left. The obese and bluntly mustachioed title character of the third-rate comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop is the biggest authority figure after Barack Obama that America has collectively chosen to lead them (or at least their box office sales charts).

It seems fair to remark on the similarities between the two do-gooders, and the significance of a pasty and useless Blart essentially becoming activated as a big hero in the movie only after he getting colorized accidentally in the mall spray-tan booth. He also changes his dopey white uniform to a casual and sexy black one… finally getting down to business and really dealing with the dangerous mall terrorists—although that story turn could be frighteningly interpreted to favor Bush’s administration in some circles.

Still, Obama’s shedding of his suit jacket in the formerly dress-coded Oval Office definitely emboldened his existing action hero image to scores of Obama-as-Superman t-shirt owners this week. As such, Mall Cop seems to be an extension of our national high (it’s no coincidence the word hero is in the word heroin) weeks past the inauguration. Even for those like me, who have to justify their purchase by paying the child’s price and also sneaking into another movie afterward.

After all, initial reviews of the Blart kept strictly to punning on its “fat profits” and its story’s “empty calories.” It wasn’t until week two that journalists had to go back and make sense of the phenomenon of this little Comedy Vehicle That Could. The Washington Post even went so far as examining the stores that were featured in the on-screen mall for answers. This week, the naysayers were able to put their brains to slight rest as Mall Cop was finally topped by Liam Neeson’s new movie, Taken, but while Mall Cop may have changed positions, you can be sure its profits remained very, very fat.

You can also be sure that if Neeson hauled out a Kinsey, or anything except another moralistic action hero movie, Kevin James would still be riding that monstrously outdated Segway on Obama’s lack-of-coattails. As more lifts on stem-cell research bans and abortion gag-rules are signed, don’t Americans suddenly have little need to punish themselves with Oscar-nominated tripe? Does anyone want to watch Frost/Nixon now? Presidents don’t lie! Does anyone want to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which I assume ends with a baby dying? That freak grows down, right?

It’s not just dramas that are being affected, either. Other, non-heroic, mainstream movies that were tailor-made for audience consumption are getting the shaft as well. Straight out of the romantic comedy factory, New in Town couldn’t even half catch up to Blart on its worst week, and opened with a limp 6.7 million dollars. Its premise—“Renee Zellwegger is cold in Minnesota!”—should have made the movie a surefire hit, but this insulin shot of celluloid simply did not cut it in Obama’s America. Who knew that if you threw rail-thin Zellwegger and Kevin James into the same pool, Zellwegger would be the one to sink?

What’s ironic about New in Town is that, before Hollywood interference, it was originally written by Kenneth Rance as a story about an African-American moving into an all-white area. Couldn’t that story have had a strong resonance today? Maybe it would have starred Halle Berry, and coincidentally featured a scene where she gets to work and takes off her blazer in a previously dress-coded office…the gasps of the conservative, Sarah Palin-sounding Minnesotans heard all around her…

We can dream of a world where that version of the movie happened, a world where we could have sustained our national highs with our choice of romantic comedy or action, but let’s not dwell on the past. Let’s look to the future with Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, and hope by the time it rolls out, we will still have a reason to root for the dressed-down hero.