A season to rave about

Eddie MURPHY'S career was on the rebound. Until this summer.

Larry and Andy Wachowski had been box-office gold. Then "Speed Racer" crashed and burned.

And not that long ago, 20th Century Fox could peddle the most middling movies. But there was no such magic for "Space Chimps," "The Rocker" or "The X-Files: I Want to Believe."

Those, however, were the few exceptions to the summer movie season, when almost everything worked for the studios.

The school's-out movie season concludes this weekend, and domestic ticket sales so far total $3.9 billion, up a little more than 1% from last year's record summer, according to Media by Numbers. Year-to-date revenues stand at $6.7 billion, down slightly from 2007, but up from the three earlier years, the tracking firm says.

Higher ticket prices mean theaters are selling fewer total admissions, but few distributors and exhibitors are complaining -- except for those handling what has become Hollywood's trickiest sell: the art film.

While the summer was filled with far more hits than catastrophes, there were a handful of star vehicles that hardly drew a breath. Mike Myers' "The Love Guru" grossed only $32.2 million. Kevin Costner's self-financed "Swing Vote" has brought in a negligible $15.5 million. And no one wanted to meet Murphy's "Meet Dave," which sold a mere $11.7 million in tickets.

Even with so many sequels, remakes and knockoffs, the quality of the movies themselves actually mattered.

No matter how hard the studios hammered away with bombastic television ads and deafening coming attractions previews, it was ultimately word of mouth -- supported by critical raves -- that propelled moviegoers to the multiplex. It was no fluke that the summer's two highest-grossing releases -- Jon Favreau's "Iron Man" and Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" -- were among the year's best-reviewed studio films.

Here's a ranking of how the major studios performed this summer:

Paramount

How in the world is Paramount ranked ahead of Warner Bros., which released "The Dark Knight," now the second highest-grossing film of all time? Consistency.

No other studio claimed more than one movie grossing more than $200 million this summer, and Paramount had three: "Iron Man," "Kung Fu Panda" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."