The 1970s ruled at the US box office this weekend with the top two places going to an adaptation of an old cop show and a reworking of a personality-swap comedy.

SWAT, which stars Samuel L Jackson and Colin Farrell as members of LA's special operations unit, took top place in its debut weekend with box office receipts of $37m. Also featuring LL Cool J and Michelle Rodriguez, it sees the SWAT team bidding to prevent the escape of a crime kingpin who has offered a $100m reward to anyone who can spring him from custody.

In second place was Freaky Friday, which stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as a mother and daughter who swap bodies. A remake of the 1976 original starring Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris, it managed a respectable $22.3m in its first weekend in cinemas.

Slipping to third was the previous top spot incumbent American Pie - The Wedding. The third in the gross-out franchise took $15.1m in its second week. It sees the series' baked goods-loving hero Jim, played by Jason Biggs, finally tie the knot with wind instrument-wielding belle Michelle (Alyson Hannigan).

Young British objects of desire Kiera Knightley and Orlando Bloom continued to swashbuckle their way on the high seas alongside Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl in fourth, while Tobey Maguire held on to fifth place in the horseracing drama Seabiscuit. The latter, an adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand's award-winning true-life book about a horse which captured the imagination of depression-era America, is being tipped for Oscar success.

The Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez box office bomb Gigli - which has suffered some of the worst reviews in history and is currently top of imdb.com's 100 worst movies of all time - unsurprisingly dropped out of the top 10 altogether in only its second week. It is still scheduled for a late September release in British cinemas but must now be a strong candidate for straight-to-video status.