"Chicago Sun Times" film critic Roger Ebert awarded the film three and a half stars out of four, saying that it "contains many pleasures, but one of the best is its conviction that the American campus contains life as we know it". In his review for "The Globe and Mail", Salem Alaton wrote, "Producer Brian Grazer craved a feel-good picture, and she Coolidge turned in the summer's best, and she didn't cheat to do it. There's heart in the kookiness. "Real Genius" has real people, real comedy and real fun". Richard Schickel of "Time" praised the film for being "a smart, no-nonsense movie that may actually teach its prime audience a valuable lesson: the best retort to an intolerable situation is not necessarily a food fight. Better results, and more fun, come from rubbing a few brains briskly together".