Roger Ebert called the film "winsome, charming, sweet and slight", but gave it only two-and-a-half out of four stars, attributing some of the film's flaws to the original material stating, "All is light and winning, and yet somehow empty. It's no excuse that the starting point was probably the weakest of Shakespeare's plays. "Love's Labour's Lost" is hardly ever performed on the stage and has never been previously filmed, and there is a reason for that: It's not about anything. In its original form, instead of the songs and dances we have dialogue that's like an idle exercise in easy banter for Shakespeare." Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" complained that the film "should be fun but isn't... worst of all perhaps is its smug air of pleasure at how clever it thinks it's being."