Stephen Hunter of the "Washington Post" called the film "a one screen multiplex" with "a lot of small movies bouncing around inside it, but there's no big movie on the outside." Hunter felt that by the end the "many personalities" of the film have "grown tiresome". Nonetheless, he complimented Tommy Lee Jones' "deadpan" portrayal, saying "Whenever Herek doesn't know what to do -- and that's frequently -- he cuts to Jones, radiating world-weariness with the aplomb of Fred Astaire, and it's always funny."