"The Right Stuff" received overwhelming acclaim from critics. The film holds a 96% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 49 reviews, with an average score of 8.81/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Right Stuff packs a lot of movie into its hefty running time, spinning a colorful, fact-based story out of consistently engaging characters in the midst of epochal events." Film critic Roger Ebert named "The Right Stuff" best film of 1983, and wrote, "it joins a short list of recent American movies that might be called experimental epics: movies that have an ambitious reach through time and subject matter, that spend freely for locations or special effects, but that consider each scene as intently as an art film". He later named it one of the best films of the decade and wrote, ""The Right Stuff" is a greater film because it is not a straightforward historical account but pulls back to chronicle the transition from Yeager and other test pilots to a mighty public relations enterprise". He later put it at #2 on his 10 best of the 1980s, behind Martin Scorsese's "Raging Bull". Gene Siskel, Ebert's co-host of "At the Movies", also named "The Right Stuff" the best film of 1983, and said "It's a great film, and I hope everyone sees it." Siskel also went on to include "The Right Stuff" at #3 on his list of the best films of the 1980s, behind "Shoah" and "Raging Bull".