The Fabulous Baker Boys - Reception

Reception

The Fabulous Baker Boys currently holds a rating of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 23 reviews, and holds a 6.7 rating on the Internet Movie Database based on 70 user and 27 critic reviews. The film was released on October 13, 1989, in 858 theaters, grossing USD $3.3 million in its opening weekend, before going on to make $18.4 million, above its $11.5 million budget.

Pauline Kael in The New Yorker wrote of the film as a "romantic fantasy that has a forties-movie sultriness and an eighties movie-struck melancholy. Put them together and you have a movie in which eighties glamour is being defined." Richard Schickel in Time called the film "a Hollywood rarity these days, a true character comedy... The wary way in which she and Jack circle in on a relationship is one of the truest representations of modern romance that the modern screen has offered." Janet Maslin in The New York Times described it as a "film specializing in smoky, down-at-the-heels glamour, and in the kind of smart, slangy dialogue that sounds right without necessarily having much to say." Rita Kempley in the Washington Post wrote that "Kloves is a nostalgic young man whose passion for Ella Fitzgerald records, film noir and romantic melodrama mesh in this classic directorial début. The Fabulous Baker Boys is like a beloved movie from the glory days of Hollywood. It transports you. It's an American rhapsody." Time Out wrote that "with more than enough witty, well-observed details, it's a little charmer... understatement is crucial to the script's success." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times was of the opinion that "The Fabulous Baker Boys doesn't do anything very original, but what it does, it does wonderfully well."

The look and atmosphere of the film were highly praised. The New York Times wrote that the "warm, rich hues of Michael Ballhaus's cinematography contribute immeasurably to the film's invitingly intimate glow." Time thought that Steve Kloves and his "fine cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus, have created a gently dislocating noirish mood - not quite menacing but not exactly comfortable either - and let it speak for itself. It is a setting where actors can live and breathe like real people." Desson Howe in the Washington Post wrote that "the man who, among many films, shot Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun, Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, James L. Brooks's Broadcast News and Mike Nichols's Working Girl, gives human skin a peachy glow, frames a seduction scene (involving back-caressing and parted lips) that's the next best thing to being there and, in what amounts to the visual zenith of the movie, paints a champagne-drinking balcony scene with appropriately moonlit intoxication."

Michelle Pfeiffer's performance drew rave reviews from almost every critic. The New York Times called her "as unexpected a choice for this musical bombshell as Jeff Bridges is for Jack, but, like him, she proves to be electrifyingly right... when Ms. Pfeiffer, draped across Jeff Bridges's piano and setting some new standard for cinematic slinkiness, performs in the above-mentioned New Year's Eve sequence with the camera gliding hypnotically around her, she just plain brings down the house." The Chicago Sun-Times wrote of this film as "the movie of her flowering - not just as a beautiful woman, but as an actress with the ability to make you care about her, to make you feel what she feels... Whatever she's doing while she performs that song isn't merely singing; it's whatever Rita Hayworth did in Gilda and Marilyn Monroe did in Some Like It Hot, and I didn't want her to stop." The New Yorker thought that she recalled "the grinning infectiousness of Carole Lombard, the radiance of the very young Lauren Bacall, and Pfeiffer herself in other movies." Time described her as "a cat with at least nine dimensions ever aflicker in her eyes." Variety wrote that "Pfeiffer hits the nail right on the head. She also hits the spot in the film's certain-to-be-remembered highlight - a version of 'Makin' Whoopee' that she sings while crawling all over a piano in a blazing red dress. She's dynamite." The Washington Post described her as "slinky and cynical, more Bacall than Bacall. Like the sun through a magnifying glass, she burns an image on the screen."

Jeff Bridges and his brother, Beau Bridges, were also acclaimed for their performances. Time thought that "the Bridges boys are better than fabulous in it - Jeff not quite falling over the line into unredeemable cynicism, Beau never succumbing to the pull of moral blandness." The New Yorker wrote that "Jeff Bridges has never been as glamorously beyond reach as he is here." The New York Times thought that "Beau Bridges also has a chance to shine." The Washington Post was of the opinion that "Jeff Bridges, lean, sexy and contemptuous, is more than up to it in this, his best work to date... Beau Bridges, all pudgy and wounded, makes a subtle villain of the fussy, guilt-inflicting Frank."

The Fabulous Baker Boys was ranked at #12 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "25 Sexiest Movies Ever".

Michelle Pfeiffer's memorable rendition of "Makin' Whoopee", sprawled over a piano in a red evening dress, has been referenced and parodied numerous times, entering pop culture as an iconic image. Homages to this scene have appeared in the film Hot Shots!, and episodes of Eureka, Ellen and Animaniacs.