At The Box Office -- `Robin Hood' Tops Summer Movies In Gross Receipts

Despite withering reviews and persistent complaints about its level of violence, "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves" is the reigning king of the summer box office.

"Robin Hood" had the strongest three-day opening of the year ($26 million) and has maintained that pace, earning approximately $80 million in less than a month. Word of mouth has proven so favorable that unmitigated blasts from The New York Times' Vincent Canby, The Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan and such television reviewers as Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel have had virtually no impact.

Nor has the National Coalition on Television Violence's criticism that "Robin Hood," which carries a PG-13 rating, "is an excessively bloody film with nonstop violence from beginning to end. . . NCTV states that `Robin Hood' should have been rated at least R."

"City Slickers," the only other summer movie that has so far developed "legs," has passed the $42 million mark and is still drawing crowds. Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever" and the Julia Roberts drama, "Dying Young" (which Premiere magazine predicted would be the summer's No. 1 hit), had good openings, but seem unlikely to reach $30 million.

Disney's costly fantasy, "The Rocketeer," has been setting records in Los Angeles, where it's playing on five screens in 70mm. But its box-office success has been spotty, and no 70mm prints have been supplied to Seattle's theaters.

Unless attendance drops off quickly in the next week or so,

"Robin Hood" will knock "The Silence of the Lambs" out of the No. 1 spot for the year. "Silence" has grossed $125 million since its Feb. 14 release.

There have been no real pretenders to Costner's throne, although returns are not yet in on "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," which opened two days ago and is expected to give "Robin Hood" its stiffest competition. It's also too early to tell how well "The Naked Gun 2 1/2" will hold up. Word-of-mouth is solid, but it's just a week old.

If there's a sleeper this summer, it's Ridley Scott's feminist road movie, "Thelma and Louise," which has been helped along by rave reviews, follow-up analyses of its appeal and a Time magazine cover piece. As Time's Richard Schickel pointed out, it's "a movie whose scenes and themes lend themselves to provocative discussion."

"Thelma and Louise" has earned only $25 million nationally, but in certain cities and theaters it's holding on in a way that suggests it will be around at summer's end. Seattle's Guild 45th is one of them.

The Seattle International Film Festival has again proven to be a spotty launching pad for independent and foreign films. "My Father's Glory," the audience favorite at this year's festival, is doing just fine at the Egyptian, and "Drowning by Numbers," "Everybody's Fine" and "Poison" have held their own. But "Crooked Hearts" and "Cross My Heart" opened disastrously, and "Lonely in America" and "Truly, Madly, Deeply" didn't do significantly better.

All vanished quickly, although none lost as much money as the biggest bomb of the summer: Bruce Willis' vanity production, "Hudson Hawk," which cost more than $50 million and has so far grossed less than a third of that.

The success of "Robin Hood" seems incomprehensible to some critics, especially those who were never fans of Kevin Costner's previous film, "Dances With Wolves," which could end up besting "Robin" at the box office (that revisionist Western has grossed $180 million in the United States since November).

But not all of the major reviews for "Robin Hood" were unfavorable. Newsweek's David Ansen called it "a marvelously stirring ride," USA Today and People magazine had encouraging words for it, while New York magazine's David Denby seemed almost reluctant to admit that he found it "exciting."

Perhaps the most perceptive explanation came from Variety's Peter Bart, who recently suggested that critics just couldn't handle the movie's shifts in tone and its "high-energy unruliness." When the villain "switches from menace to self-parody virtually in mid-sentence, the audience laughs in delight while the critics wince. `Batman' got away with this sleight-of-hand. `Robin Hood' would love to peel off part of that following."

1991'S TOP TEN GROSSERS (estimated so far):

1. "Silence of the Lambs," $125 million.

2. "Sleeping With the Enemy," $98 million.

3. "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves," $80 million.

4. "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze," $76 million.

5. "Backdraft," $55 million.

6. "What About Bob?," $52 million.

7. "New Jack City," $46 million.

8. "City Slickers," $42 million.

9. "Out For Justice," $38 million.

10. "The Doors," $35 million.

Three holdovers from 1990 also added substantially to their box-office take in 1991: "Home Alone," which recently passed the $280 million mark; "Dances With Wolves," which has earned nearly $180 million; and "Kindergarten Cop," which hit $91 million. Two reissues, "Citizen Kane" and "Spartacus," have earned more than $1 million apiece since May.