Some critics complained about the casting. Nathan Lane as Costard received favourable notice, as did Adrian Lester. But the leads (Silverstone and Nivola) were generally panned; Stanley Kauffmann, who had been highly complimentary of Branagh's four-hour film version of "Hamlet", called them "inadequate in every way." John Simon complained as well of cutting that left the film's best actors (he mentions McEwan and Briers) with little to do. Kauffmann and Simon both noted that the film's ending, in which newsreel footage shows the men going off to fight in World War II, was grotesquely at odds with the frothy tone of the movie it concluded.