Upon its original American release many American critics had an extremely harsh reaction to the film. Roger Ebert awarded "Little Indian, Big City" a rare "Zero Stars" rating and called it one of the worst films ever made claiming that he was annoyed by the awful dubbing as well as the writing and what he perceived as terrible humor. He ended his original "Chicago Sun Times" newspaper review by saying "If you under any circumstances see "Little Indian, Big City", I will never let you read one of my reviews again". Ebert's colleague Gene Siskel also deplored the film saying that it was likely to be a candidate for the year's (or any year's) worst film. He also said that if the word for the film got big enough in the United States family audiences would have been "hoodwinked into paying to see a totally unprofessional movie." When Siskel and Ebert viewed the film during its original theatrical release, one of the film reels broke out and the third reel of film was missing. A film executive informed Siskel and Ebert that they were allowed to come back the following week and view the particular reel. Siskel and Ebert came back to view the third reel, and by the time they had concluded viewing the whole film Siskel was quoted as saying, "If it was the legendary missing footage from "The Magnificent Ambersons", this movie would still suck." Both Siskel and Ebert later went on to claim this as one of the worst motion pictures they had ever seen (though it's not on Ebert's "Most Hated Films" list), and in January 1997, on Siskel and Ebert's "Worst of the Year" program for 1996, Ebert went on to call "Little Indian, Big City" the second worst film of the year, just behind "Mad Dog Time".