It has been panned critically for being a series of bizarre episodes strung together rather than having a cohesive central plot. Movie historian Leonard Maltin remarked that "Even Neil Young's music score can't save this dreadful comedy, which will baffle those who aren't familiar with Hunter S. Thompson's work and insult those who are." Film critic Roger Ebert gave "Where the Buffalo Roam" two stars out of four and said that "The movie fails to deal convincingly with either Thompson's addictions or with his friendship with Lazlo". However, Ebert also noted that "this is the kind of bad movie that's almost worth seeing". Gene Siskel awarded two-and-a-half stars out of four and declared that "Murray is fine at playing an angry clown, but 'Where the Buffalo Roam' should have given us much more than that. There's nothing in the film that would make anyone want to read Hunter Thompson's words. And that's a critical failure for a movie about a writer." In his review for "The Washington Post", Gary Arnold wrote, "Well, the actors haven't transcended their material. They're simply stuck with it. Murray and Boyle don't emerge as a swell comic team, and they aren't funny as individuals either." Jack Kroll wrote, in his review for "Newsweek" magazine, "Screenwriter John Kaye has reduced Thompson's career to a rubble of disjointed episodes, and the relentless mayhem becomes tiresome chaos rather than liberating comic anarchy." In his review for "The Globe and Mail", Paul McGrath wrote, "Murray is, nonetheless, the salvation of this patched-together film", and felt that "the rest is mostly filler. The story is so badly put together in the first place - and from there, badly scripted - that the movie makes almost no impact outside the infrequent hilarity". Roger Angell of "The New Yorker" wrote, "The most surprising thing ... is how much of Thompson's tone gets into the picture".