Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Bruce Almighty may have held fast in the top two UK/Ireland chart positions but as temperatures soared across the country so did two limited releases.

Launched in the Republic of Ireland Buena Vista International's (BVI) Veronica Guerin triumphed with a $443,713 (£271,996) weekend - including $57,532 (£35,267) - from 53 sites. Topping the table in Ireland, the film took a stunning fourth place in the UK/Ireland chart and boasted a site average of $8,372. It opens across the rest of the UK on Aug 1. (For more details on the Irish launch see separate news story).

Another strong performance came from New Zealand drama Whale Rider. Icon Film Distribution's tale of a young Maori girl's fight to fulfil her destiny opened in seventh place with $198,385 (£121,610). Playing at 56 venues the film took a weekend average of $3,543 per site.

Whale Rider played particularly well in London's West End where it grossed $86,109 (£52,785) from 16 sites - an average of $5,382 per location. Strong positive reviews and word of mouth should help Whale Rider continue to flourish in coming weeks, providing good counter-programming of thoughtful intelligent drama against the massively-hyped US summer blockbusters.

Columbia TriStar had a good weekend, holding the top spot with the Charlie's Angels sequel and taking third place with Eddie Murphy family film Daddy Day Care. Full Throttle dropped off 45% in its second weekend, a reasonable drop-off considering the average week-on-week fall for the top ten UK holdovers was 60% as temperatures reached 27C-29C. Taking $2.6m (£1.6m) from 475 sites this week, the sequel now has a ten-day cumulative score of $10.6m (£6.5m).

Daddy Day Care opened into a market with few family films to take a solid $1.3m (£796,259) from 404 locations. The film faces a lot of upcoming competition in its market, however, starting with BVI's Piglet's Big Movie next week. The animated title, featuring Piglet, Winnie the Pooh and friends, has already opened in Scotland and the Republic of Ireland and has grossed $413,344 (£253,380) to date. It opens on Friday (July 18). This is followed up UIP's animated effort Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas and 20th Century Fox's live action kids adventure Agent Cody Banks on July 25; BVI's Spy Kids 3D: Game Over on July 31; and another UIP animation, Rugrats Go Wild, on Aug 8.

Disaster of the week was Warner Bros' The In-Laws. The Michael Douglas-Albert Brooks comedy was savaged by critics and took just $176,233 (£108,031) from 237 sites for a poor average of $744 per location.

Rounding out the top five was UIP's 2 Fast 2 Furious. The sequel has now surpassed the total of the 2001 original, The Fast And The Furious, haven taken $11m (£6.7m) to date.