Dead Poets Society Peter Weir

Box office

The worldwide box office was reported as $235,860,579, which includes domestic grosses of $95,860,116.[3] The film's global receipts were the fifth-highest for 1989, and the highest for dramas.[21]

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 84%, based on 61 reviews, with an average score of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Affecting performances from the young cast and a genuinely inspirational turn from Robin Williams grant Peter Weir's prep school drama top honors."[22] On Metacritic, the film received a score of 79, based on 14 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[23] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" grade on a scale of A+ to F.[24]

The Washington Post's reviewer called it "solid, smart entertainment", and praised Robin Williams for giving a "nicely restrained acting performance".[25]

Vincent Canby of The New York Times also praised Williams's "exceptionally fine performance", while writing that "Dead Poets Society... is far less about Keating than about a handful of impressionable boys".[4]

Pauline Kael was unconvinced about the film and its "middlebrow highmindedness", but praised Williams. "Robin Williams'[s] performance is more graceful than anything he's done before [–] he's totally, concentratedly there – [he] reads his lines stunningly, and when he mimics various actors reciting Shakespeare there's no undue clowning in it; he's a gifted teacher demonstrating his skills."[26]

Roger Ebert's review for the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two stars out of four. He criticized Williams for spoiling an otherwise creditable dramatic performance by occasionally veering into his onstage comedian's persona, and lamented that for a film set in the 1950s, there was no mention of the Beat Generation writers. Additionally, Ebert described the film as an often poorly constructed "collection of pious platitudes.... The movie pays lip service to qualities and values that, on the evidence of the screenplay itself, it is cheerfully willing to abandon."[27]

On their Oscar-nomination edition of Siskel & Ebert, both Gene Siskel (who also gave the film a mixed review) and Ebert disagreed with Williams's Oscar nomination. Ebert said that he would have swapped Williams with either Matt Dillon for Drugstore Cowboy or John Cusack for Say Anything.[28] On their If We Picked the Winners special in March 1990, Ebert chose the film's Best Picture nomination as the worst nomination of the year, believing that it took a slot that could have gone to Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing.[29]

Film historian Leonard Maltin wrote, "Well made, extremely well acted, but also dramatically obvious and melodramatically one-sided. Nevertheless, Tom Schulman's screenplay won an Oscar."[30]

John Simon, writing for National Review, said that Dead Poets Society was the most dishonest film that he had seen in some time.[31]

Accolades

American Film Institute Lists

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
  • "Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary." – #95
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers – #52[45]

The film's line, "Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.", was voted as the 95th greatest movie quote by the American Film Institute.[46]

Legacy

After Robin Williams's death in August 2014, fans of his work used social media to pay tribute to him with photo and video reenactments of the film's final "O Captain! My Captain!" scene.[47]