Reception
Tommy Boy opened as the No. 1 movie in the United States on March 31, 1995, eventually falling out of the Top 20 within seven weeks. Total U.S. box office gross was $32,648,673. The film did well financially, but received mixed reviews from critics upon its initial release. Rotten Tomatoes' index rates the film at 45%. Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert wrote: "'Tommy Boy' is one of those movies that plays like an explosion down at the screenplay factory. You can almost picture a bewildered office boy, his face smudged with soot, wandering through the ruins and rescuing pages at random. Too bad they didn't mail them to the insurance company instead of filming them." The film is on Ebert's "Most Hated" list.
Caryn James of The New York Times wrote that the film was "the very poor cousin of a dopey Jim Carrey movie". Bo Derek won a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress. The film received positive reviews from the Lawrence Journal-World, the Los Angeles Times, and the Arizona Daily Star. Since its release, some critics have declared the film is a "cult classic."
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Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“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)
“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)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)