Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" called the film "a pleasant, civilized comedy" and added, ""Avanti!" isn't a laugh-a-minute kind of a movie, and it's too long by maybe half an hour. It also suffers from the problem that the audience has everything figured out several minutes before Jack Lemmon does. Still, the movie has a certain charm, some of which seeps in along with the locations, and there is in most of the many Wilder/Lemmon collaborations a cheerful insouciance, as if life is best approached with a cheerful, if puzzled, grin."