Box office Love Story was an instant box-office smash. It opened in two theaters in New York City, Loew's State I and Tower East, grossing $128,022 in its first week. It also grossed a record $5,007,706 for the week and grossed $2,493,167 the following weekend. It remained number one at the US box office for the next four weeks, before finishing second behind
The Owl and the Pussycat for one week and then returning to the top of the box office for another six weeks. It went into general release in the United States on June 23, 1971, expanding into an additional 143 theaters in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis, grossing $1,660,761 in five days and returned to number one at the US box office for another 3 weeks, for a total of 15 weeks at number one. It was the sixth
highest-grossing film of all time in U.S. and Canada with a gross of $106,397,186. It grossed an additional $67 million in international film markets for a worldwide total of $173.4 million ($1.3 billion in 2023 dollars). Hiller also said, "The message of
Love Story really is what two people can give to each other for love alone. You know, people made fun of the phrase "Love means never having to say you're sorry." But think about it. All it says is that if you love somebody, you understand they're not perfect and they don't have to apologize for every little thing they do that isn't perfect. Its an affirmation of the human spirit... We hit at a time when if you disagreed with somebody, you hated them. That was the feeling in 1969 and 1970. Well, people were tired of that and were looking to say, hey, love is okay. You can be mad at somebody and still love them."
Critical response Overall,
Love Story received positive reviews.
Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected reviews from 31 critics and gave the film a score of 65%. The critical consensus reads: "Earnest and determined to make audiences swoon,
Love Story is an unabashed tearjerker that will capture hearts when it isn't inducing eye rolls."
Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and called it "infinitely better than the book," adding, "because Hiller makes the lovers into individuals, of course we're moved by the film's conclusion. Why not?"
Charles Champlin of the
Los Angeles Times was also positive, writing that although "the plotline has been honored many times... It's the telling that matters: the surfaces and the textures and the charm of the actors. And it is hard to see how these quantities could have been significantly improved upon in
Love Story."
Newsweek felt the film was contrived
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times wrote, "I can't remember any movie of such comparable high-style kitsch since Leo McCarey's
Love Affair (1939) and his 1957 remake,
An Affair to Remember. The only really depressing thing about
Love Story is the thought of all the terrible imitations that will inevitably follow it."
Gene Siskel gave the film two stars out of four and wrote that "whereas the novel has a built-in excuse for being spare (it is told strictly as the boy's reminiscence), the film does not. Seeing the characters in the movie ... makes us want to know something about them. We get precious little, and love by fiat doesn't work well in film." Gary Arnold of
The Washington Post wrote, "I found this one of the most thoroughly resistible sentimental films I've ever seen. There is scarcely a character or situation or line in the story that rings true, that suggests real simplicity or generosity of feeling, a sentiment or emotion honestly experienced and expressed." Writer
Harlan Ellison wrote in
The Other Glass Teat, his book of collected criticism, that it was "shit".
John Simon wrote that
Love Story was so bad that it never once moved him.
Love Story was ranked number 9 on the
AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions list, which recognizes the top 100 love stories in
American cinema. The film also spawned a trove of imitations, parodies, and homages in countless films, having re-energized
melodrama on the silver screen, as well as helping to set the template for the modern "
chick flick".
"Movie illness" criticism Jenny Cavilleri's disease being unspecified and her relatively good looks during the onset of her illness was met with criticism for its implausibility.
Vincent Canby wrote in his original
New York Times review that it was "as if Jenny was suffering from some vaguely unpleasant
Elizabeth Arden treatment". In 1997,
Roger Ebert defined "Ali MacGraw's Disease" as a movie illness in which "the only symptom is that the patient grows more beautiful until finally dying".
Accolades ====
American Film Institute==== == Soundtrack ==