In his three-star review in the "Chicago Sun-Times", Roger Ebert called it "one of those offcenter comedies that gets its best moments simply by looking at people and seeing how funny, how pathetic, how wonderful they sometimes can be . . . it's a bright, edgy, funny story about people who have all the talent they need, but not all the luck . . . It is helpful, I think, to simply forget about the missing songs, and recognize that "I'll Do Anything" is a complete movie without them - smart, original, subversive." Janet Maslin of the "New York Times" described it as "droll" and "improbably buoyant."