Comparing the film to the earlier television adaptation, A.O. Scott of "The New York Times" called it "necessarily shorter and less faithful to Waugh's book, and also, for what it's worth, more cinematic. It is also tedious, confused and banal." He blamed director Jarrold and screenwriters Davies and Brock "for finding so little new or interesting to say... and for systematically stripping Waugh's novel of its telling nuances and provocative ideas." He concluded, "The long experience of English Catholics as a religious minority, the subtle gradations of class in the British university system, the crazy quilt of sexual norms and taboos governing the lives of young adults: all of this is what makes "Brideshead Revisited" live and breathe as a novel. None of it registers with any force in this lazy, complacent film, which takes the novel's name in vain."