brothers on-screen. The Fabulous Baker Boys was released on October 13, 1989 in 858 theaters, grossing $3,313,815 during its opening weekend. Tickets initially sold well in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles due to strong word of mouth. Originally released in over 800 theatres during its opening weekend, 20th Century Fox head of distribution Tom Sherak informed Kloves the following Monday that the studio would be removing the film from most of these theatres by the following weekend.The Fabulous Baker Boys would go on to earn $18.4 million worldwide against its $11.5 million budget. Despite its mediocre box office performance, the film proved to be a major top-seller once released on home video, for a period trailing behind the Back to the Future franchise in terms of popularity. According to a poll conducted by Billboard, The Fabulous Baker Boys was the second most rented home video in July 1990. AllMovie contributor Aubry Anne D'Arminio attributes the film's home video achievements to positive word-of-mouth following its four Academy Award nominations. The film was released to DVD on August 21, 1998. Critical response The Fabulous Baker Boys received critical acclaim upon release. The film holds a 97% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Its story is nothing special, but The Fabulous Baker Boys glows beneath luminous performances from its perfectly cast stars." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 85 out of 100 based on 25 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. Pauline Kael of The New Yorker said The Fabulous Baker Boys defines 1980s glamour. Praising its performances, Ballhaus' camera work and Grusin's score, Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader wrote that the film demonstrates "plenty of old-fashioned virtues". Time film critic Richard Schickel called the film "a Hollywood rarity", hailing Susie and Jack's relationship as "one of the truest representations of modern romance that the modern screen has offered." Praising Kloves's writing and directing, Schickel deemed The Fabulous Baker Boys worth of "the protection only large, enthusiastic audiences can provide." The New York Times' Janet Maslin described The Fabulous Baker Boys 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