Cats and Dogs tops UK box office

Cats and Dogs: Secret war between the species

Family comedy Cats and Dogs has beaten Rush Hour 2 to the top of the UK film chart.

Dinosaur blockbuster Jurassic Park III - number one for the last fortnight - dropped to third place.

Cats and Dogs took £3,707,358 in its first weekend, beating Rush Hour 2's £2,286,253, according to figures from Screen International.

A mixture of live action and animation is used in the film, which stars Jeff Goldblum and features the voices of Alec Baldwin, Tobey Maguire and Susan Sarandon.

UK box office top five

1. Cats and Dogs

2. Rush Hour 2

3. Jurassic Park II

4. Swordfish

5. Shrek

Source: Screen International

It depicts a top-secret, high-tech espionage war between cats and dogs, of which their human owners are unaware.

Rush Hour 2, starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, is the follow-up to the duo's first Rush Hour cop comedy and shot to the top of the US film chart this week.

Meanwhile Jurassic Park III follows in the footsteps of its two hit predecessors by again focusing on a group of humans being chased around a remote island by pre-historic monsters.

Sam Neill again takes the lead, as in the first movie, and is joined by female co-star Tea Leoni.

And whereas the first two Jurassic films were directed by Steven Spielberg, this time Joe Johnston has taken the helm.

Rush Hour II went to the top of US charts

The film took £1,353,560 in its third week, bringing its total to £12,362,926.

At number four was John Travolta's latest movie Swordfish. The thriller came in last week at number two.

Still popular after six weeks on release was animated fairy tale comedy Shrek - from Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks company.

The former number one film, in the US and the UK, was still at number five in the charts and has taken £22,306,682.

The only other new release to make it into the Top 20 was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

The computer-generated film came in at 14, despite creating prior interest because of its "realistic" actors - and supposed advance towards doing without highly paid human stars.