"Entertainment Weekly"s Lisa Schwarzbaum gave it a C, writing that she found the brotherly storyline between Jason and Joshua more compelling than the main romantic plot, saying that the latter was "so dense with big themes strung together that character development suffers. And the emotional sum is less than the interconnection of its Tragedy 101 parts." In a review for "The New York Times", Caryn James criticized the filmmaking for being overly stylized with its poetic aspirations and making the plot twist "unintentionally confusing rather than deliberately holding back information" with its editing. She called "Jason's Lyric" "a muddled film that takes a standard urban action movie and adds a veneer of overwrought romance."