difference is the then-47-year-old Robin Williams portrays Adams as enrolling in medical school very late in his life, his older age even being brought up in dialogue. In reality, Adams started medical school immediately and his educational progress was quite normal for a physician: he graduated high school at 18, college at 22, and medical school at 26. Reception Box office The film was released on December 25, 1998, in the United States and Canada and grossed $25.2 million in 2,712 theaters its opening weekend, ranking #1 at the box office. Upon opening, it achieved the third-highest December opening weekend, behind Titanic and Scream 2. It went on to set a record for having the highest Christmas opening weekend, beating Michael. For two years, the film would hold this record until 2000 when Cast Away took it. After its first weekend, it was the #2 film for four weeks. The film grossed US$202.3 million worldwide—$135 million in the United States and Canada and $67.3 million in other territories. Critical reception On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Patch Adams has an approval score of 21% based on 71 reviews and an average rating of 4.20/10. The critical consensus reads, "Syrupy performances and directing make this dramedy all too obvious." On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 25 out of 100 based on reviews from 21 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B" on scale of A to F. Janet Maslin of The New York Times criticized the film's lowbrow comedy, which did not mesh well with its "maudlin streak" and that the sentiment felt "fabricated". Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film an F, deeming it "an offensive and deeply false 'inspirational' drama", lambasting the over-simplified portrayal of the medical establishment of the time. Robert K. Elder of the Chicago Tribune called Monica Potter "the best thing about the otherwise dopey Patch Adams." Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert gave the film one and a half stars out of four and wrote, "Patch Adams made me want to spray the screen with Lysol. This movie is shameless. It's not merely a tearjerker. It extracts tears individually by liposuction, without anesthesia." It received "Two Thumbs Down" on his television series Siskel & Ebert, with particular criticism towards the character of Patch, who was viewed as "overbearing", "obnoxious" and "sanctimonious" as well as