"I Vitelloni" opened in the United States on 7 November 1956 to generally positive reviews. In his "New York Times" review, Bosley Crowther reported that Fellini, with "his volatile disposition and a desire to make a stinging film ... does certainly take a vigorous whiplash to the breed of over-grown and over-sexed young men who hang around their local poolrooms and shun work as though it were a foul disease. He ridicules them with all the candor of his sharp neo-realist style, revealing their self-admiration to be sadly immature and absurd. And without going into reasons for the slack state of these young men, he indicates that they are piteous and merit some sympathy too". For John Simon, Nino Rota's music was one "of the most brilliant features of the film ... The first its two main themes is a soaring, romantic melody that can be made to express nostalgia, love, and the pathos of existence ... Slowed down, second main theme becomes lugubrious; with eerie figurations in the woodwinds it turns sinister. The quicksilver changes in the music support the changing moods of the story".