“Anchorman 2” had a great Friday night, and beat “The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug” by a nose. But by Saturday the kids took over the box office and never gave it back. The result is a weekend win for “Smaug” with $31.455 million vs. $26.7 mi for Will Ferrell and friends. That movie now has $40 mil in the bank. “Smaug” $127.5 mil and $262 mil worldwide.

Bigger news: “American Hustle” comes out of the box at number 4 with $20 million. This is going to be Sony’s comeback hit, the one that erases their summer failures. “American Hustle” has lots of Oscar nominations in its future. Right now it’s leading the pack vs. “12 Years a Slave” for Best Picture. David O. Russell is poised for a big success after “The Fighter” and “Silver Linings Playbook.”

If “American Hustle” really breaks out, and I think it will, Amy Adams is going to knock one of the big 5 out of Best Actress. Emma Thompson would seem the most vulnerable, and Sandra Bullock next. Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench are secure.

One movie that seems more lost at sea than “All is Lost” is “Dallas Buyers Club.” It’s already in decline at $15 million even with two Oscar-tipped performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto. What happened? Focus Features is what happened. They closed up their New York shop, got rid of almost everyone, and are going mainstream. They leave a long line of casualties behind, from “Brokeback Mountain” to “Milk” to “Atonement” and more. In their next iteration, Focus maybe will more focused under Peter Schlessel.

Talk about corporate synergy! The NYPost and 20th Century Fox are each owned by Rupert Murdoch. You’d think that an expensive Fox movie with a Christmas Day rollout might get a little love from the Post even if it’s not that great. Ben Stiller’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” has a 42% on Rotten Tomatoes, so you know some people liked it a little bit. It’s not like it’s totally slammed.

But who really didn’t like it? The NY Post! Kyle Smith, who bashed “Philomena” for being anti-Catholic, has been on a tear all season. Now he’s gone after his own company’s Christmas jewel in the crown, “Walter Mitty.” In his 1 and a half star review titled “Walter Mitty is a Lifeless Flick,” Smith in unsparing in his disgust over Stiller’s take on the Danny Kaye classic.

He writes: “This meaningless excuse for special-effects spending is like watching a wheezing arthritic horse dragging a tractor-trailer full of big-budget digital equipment.”

Ouch!

Yes, there’s more: He says Stiller’s directing is “what looks like one of his last desperate reaches for artistic importance.”

Smith concludes: “That this movie got made at all demonstrates that Hollywood thinks that if it can design a project so as to yield half a dozen different digital sequences for the trailer, no one will much care about whether they add up to anything. Walter’s fantastic trip to faraway lands of adventure was superfluous, making his movie “The Wizard of Zzzzzz.”

Well, “Mitty” is a so-so effort. Stiller is not a great director. “The Cable Guy” remains a low point in movie history. But he is an excellent writer and I enjoy him as an actor. He was especially good in “Greenberg” and very funny in “Tropic Thunder.”

More to the point, Fox has not had a great year. They’ve just had 3 duds in a row with “Runner Runner,” “The Book Thief,” and “The Counselor.” Earlier this year, “The Internship” was an embarrassment. Their highest grossing film of the year was the animated “The Croods,” which you never saw. They also flopped in the US with “A Good Day to Die Hard,” although its awfulness wasn’t realized abroad where it made $237 million. (Thank god for China, Japan, and South Korea!)

As for the NYPost: you only hurt the ones you love. Families are never easy at Christmas time.