Didn't know this did so well at the box office

oh yeah one of the biggest films of 88.

Yep. Its typical i think. Huge box office numbers, very entertaining movie and yet people consistently give it a low rating on sites like these. Sad...

I love it, by the way...

-e

Yes it did.This was at the height of his career.He had just come off of hit films like The Color Of Money and Top Gun.Actually the film opend up 2 weeks in a row at #1 starting on July 29th and stayed in the top 10 all the way until the the weekend of October 14-16th.1988 had alot of big films that came out.

So? Twilight makes hundreds of millions today.

Back in 1988 Tom Cruise (alongside Patrick Swayze) was THE teenage heart throb.

So a lot of teens saw this movie.

And discmann, I don't know if you are aware of this but outside the imdb, in the real world, this dreadful movie won the Razzie Award for the worst movie of 1988. Also, on Rottentomatoes (critical aggregate to form an average percentage) it has a really low 14% rating (usually where major flops are rated).

So the critical consensus of the professional reviewers was abysmal.
The popular vote on imdb is bad.
It won the Razzie Award.

I don't know how you can get around those 3, unless you think that whatever appealed to lovesick teens back in 1988 has value today.

Oh, and it was made fun of in Bret Easten Ellis novel "American Psycho" in which Patrick Bateman meets Tom Cruise and tells him he liked "Bartender" (indicating he never cared for neither the title nor the plot, just the cheesy visuals).

[deleted]