her although he is more of a freewheeling character. Reception Box office performance Upon its release, the film was a surprising success and became Eastwood's most commercially successful film at the time. The film opened in 1,275 theatres and grossed $10,272,294 in its first week, beating Eastwood's previous best opener, The Enforcer. It grossed a total of $104.3 million in the United States and Canada, ranking high amongst those of Eastwood's career, and was the second-highest-grossing film of 1978. Critical response It received largely negative reviews, however. Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the film "the slackest and most harebrained of Mr. Eastwood's recent movies. It's overlong and virtually uneventful, even though there are half a dozen cute characters and woolly subplots competing for the viewer's attentions." Variety commented, "This film is so awful it's almost as if Eastwood is using it to find out how far he can go—how bad a film he can associate himself with." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune awarded 2.5 stars out of 4 and wrote that the comedy "breaks new ground" for Eastwood, but the film "has been sloppily made. Its villains are pathetic cartoon characters; its seemingly-sweet leading lady turns out to be a psychotic. These errors cripple what could have been an extremely entertaining story." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called it "a slapdash, slapstick comedy" that "pushes all the right buttons" for audiences but "lacks both the urgency and the emotional satisfactions of Eastwood's angrier films." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "Eastwood must have thought of his blundering new vehicle, 'Every Which Way but Loose,' as a change of pace, designed to align his career in a direction similar to that of Burt Reynolds. Casual, knockabout farce seems to be the general idea, but perhaps Eastwood should have borrowed the director and writers who helped shape 'Smokey and the Bandit' and 'Hooper' for Reynolds. 'Every Which Way but Loose' certainly isn't loose. It's a sluggish shambles." David Ansen of Newsweek wrote, "One can forgive the orangutan's participation - he couldn't read the script - but what is Eastwood's excuse? That a star with his power in Hollywood would choose to litter the screen with this plotless junk heap of moronic gags, sour romance and fatuous fisticuffs can be taken either as an expression of contempt for his huge audience or as an act of