Far less enthusiastic was Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times", who stated, "This movie is appalling. It made me want to rub my eyes. Was it possible that the great Billy Wilder ... could possibly have made a film this bad? "Buddy Buddy" is very bad. It is a comedy without any laughs. (And, yes, I mean literally that it contains no laughs.) But it is worse than that. It succeeds in reducing two of the most charming actors in American motion picture history to unlikable ciphers. Can you imagine a film that co-stars Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon and yet contains no charm, ebullience, wit, charisma – even friendliness? This whole movie is like one of those pathetic Hollywood monsters drained of its life fluids ... Basically, we are invited to watch two drudges meander through a witless, pointless exercise in farce ... "Buddy Buddy" is incompetent. And that is the saddest word I can think of to describe it." Gene Siskel named it as the worst film of 1981 (Roger Ebert hated the film as much as Siskel did, but his pick for the worst film of 1981 was Heaven's Gate).