In "Entertainment Weekly", Lisa Schwarzbaum, who graded the film B+, compared "Calendar Girls" with other British comedy films such as "Billy Elliot" and "Saving Grace". She commented that "is the first export from the light-comedy-steamroller division of the British film industry that avoids, for the most part, the kind of queasy class condescension such hell-bent charmers have relied on since unemployed steel-mill workers shook their groove thangs in "The Full Monty"." "Variety" critic Derek Elley wrote that the film "delivers very likable, if sometimes dramatically wobbly, results". He found that "though the film is never dull, and playing by the cast is spirited, it's actually a surprisingly gentle movie [... The humor has a typically British, offhanded flavor, and the essentially simple story plays more as a multi-character rondo on a single idea. For every laugh-out-loud moment, or eccentric touch, there are equal moments of reflection and pause [...] Despite an uncertain start in establishing a consistent comic tone, pic builds into an engaging, light character comedy, played somewhere between the Ealing tradition and contempo regional comedy."