Reception
What About Bob? was a financial success. It grossed $63 million domestically during its original theatrical run plus an additional $29 million in video rentals and sales bringing its overall domestic gross to $92 million. Critical reaction was also favorable. It currently holds an 82% on the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes with a majority of critics giving the film positive reviews. When the television program Siskel and Ebert reviewed the film, Roger Ebert gave the film a "thumbs up" rating praising the different performances of Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss onscreen together as well as most of the film's humor. He said it was Bill Murray's best movie since Ghostbusters in 1984. Gene Siskel, on the other hand, was not a fan of the film and gave it a "thumbs down." He felt Murray gave a very funny and enjoyable performance in the film, but was rather upset by the Dreyfuss character and his angry and arrogant behaviors. He felt it would have been funnier if Dreyfuss had not given such an angry performance in the film and said that Dreyfuss ultimately ruined the film for him. Leonard Maltin also gave the film a favorable review: in Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide he gives the film three stars out of a possible four, saying it's "a very funny outing with Murray and Dreyfuss approaching the relationship of the road runner and the coyote." Maltin faulted the film only for its ending, which he found very abrupt and silly. In the years since its release the film has become a cult classic among fans, and has been shown in some psychology classes in schools and colleges across America.
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Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
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