Reception
The film performed poorly at the box office, taking $200,723 across 4 screens in the USA. Channel 4 were disappointed with the returns on the film and shelved another Richardson project, Five Go To Hell.
Critics were mixed in their opinions on the film. Hal Hinson writing in The Washington Post gave it a lukewarm review, writing "The punk jaggedness they bring to their derivations is the only hint of originality, but this, too, seems a little staid. It feels like punk on the downward swing, after most of its rude energy has dissipated." However Vincent Canby in The New York Times was more favourable and drew comparisons to "an upscale John Waters satire" and "Jean-Luc Godard's pre-Maoist period."
In January 1988 the film was one of those attacked for its critique of Thatcherite society by Oxford University historian Norman Stone, which he condemned in the Sunday Times as being "worthless and insulting" and "riddled with left wing bias".
Eat The Rich featured at #49 in Time Out London's list of "Cinema's 50 greatest flops, follies and failures." The feature stated: " may not have had the budget to be considered a true flop, but the back-alley production values and total lack of comic invention on display in this Thatcher-baiting misstep meant that any hopes of a Pythonesque run at the movies were knocked way back on their heels."
Read more about this topic: Eat The Rich (film)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)