It's a movie industry truism that when times are tough, the hoi polloi long to see Hollywood millionaires falling off rooftops and smacking each other around. During The Great Depression, Reuters reminds us, "families flocked to madcap movies by Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, and the Three Stooges." This year, the beneficiaries of our financial woes have included Tropic Thunder, Step Brothers, and Get Smart. And now, of course, Four Christmases is the current box-office champ. Which can only lead to the frightening conclusion that audiences are even more desperate now for a laugh than when they were sleeping in cardboard boxes and surviving on sandwiches made out of old newspapers. Indeed, as long as Four Christmases is the country's #1 hit, we're officially in The Even-Greater Depression.