Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" called it "a big, elaborate, sometimes realistic film whose elephantine physical proportions and often brilliant all-star cast simply overwhelm the material with a surfeit of good intentions." "Variety" called the film "dedicated, exhilarating, shrewd, mocking, funny, emotional, witty, poignant and technically brilliant." Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun Times" gave the film 4 stars out of 4, writing that it was not a movie but "an elaborately staged tableau, a dazzling use of the camera to achieve essentially theatrical effects. And judged on that basis, Richard Attenborough has given us a breathtaking evening." Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" also gave the film a perfect grade of 4 stars and wrote it "deserves an Academy Award nomination for the best picture of the year ... You can sit back and enjoy this film on any one of many levels. The songs are good, the lyrics are biting; the staging and costuming blend with the story rather than overshadow it. The acting seems effortless." Kevin Thomas of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote: "What noted British actor Richard Attenborough, in a dazzling directorial debut, and his principal writers Len Deighton and Brian Duffy have done is to transform the highly political and one-dimensional Joan Littlewood theatre piece into timeless—and painfully timely—tragic allegory." Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" wrote: "The conception is intriguing, but the film turns into an infernal, precision machine. As one big production number succeeded the other and one perfectly measured and symmetrical tableau faded into the next, I began to feel stupefied rather than touched. The physical production was rolling over the songs, the characters and the vignettes." David Wilson of "The Monthly Film Bulletin" wrote that "one is simply left admiring a worthy mosaic of bits and pieces, full of good ideas but nowhere near to being a self-contained dramatic entity."