Reception
The film took in $35,431,113 at the North American box office, including $10,608,297 on its opening weekend. With a budget at an estimated $68,000,000 and a box office total of approximately $77 million, the film was a moderate box office bomb. It was generally poorly received by film critics, described by one reviewer as "a loud and truly pointless action-comedy". Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a "Rotten" rating of 22% based on 32 reviews.
In addition to its middling reviews, the film was vilified for its portrayal of a man robbing a ticket booth by running a rubber tube around the bulletproof partition and dousing the attendant with an unknown flammable liquid, then threatening to set them on fire. This crime was repeated in real life after the film's release, although the police did not think the similar crime was related to the film. Nevertheless, many people including Bob Dole called for a boycott of the film.
Read more about this topic: Money Train
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.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“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)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)