The "Daily Express"s reviewer found Lester's direction "a joy to watch" and called the Beatles "the closest thing to the Marx Brothers since the Marx Brothers". By contrast, the "Daily Mirror", Britain's best-selling newspaper at the time, said "Help!" relied too heavily on "the likeable vacant grin of John Lennon, the smooth charm of Paul, the long-haired good looks of George, and the darkly villainous looks of the Long-Nosed One Starr", and that these qualities were insufficient to carry a film. In his book "1965: The Year Modern Britain Was Born", cultural commentator Christopher Bray views "Help!" as "one of the central surrealist texts" of the 1960s, and the film that best captures the "magical weirdness" of London before the commercialisation that accompanied its international recognition as the world's "Swinging City".