Critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, "These opening shots are so evocative of Raymond Chandler's immortal Marlowe, private eye, haunting the underbelly of Los Angeles, that if we're Chandler fans we hold our breath. Is the ambience going to be maintained, or will this be another campy rip-off? Half an hour into the movie, we relax. "Farewell, My Lovely" never steps wrong...in the genre itself there hasn't been anything this good since Hollywood was doing Philip Marlowe the first time around. One reason is that Dick Richards, the director, takes his material and character absolutely seriously. He is not uneasy with it, as Robert Altman was when he had Elliott Gould flirt with seriousness in "The Long Goodbye". Richards doesn't hedge his bet."