Jack Garner of the "Democrat and Chronicle" gave the film a rating of 8 out of 10, concluding that he was pleasantly surprised at the documentary's entertainment value. He described it as educational, despite "Fuck"s repetitive use of the word. In "The Boston Globe" Wesley Morris commented that the director's flippant style was beneficial, enabling him to make serious educational points to the audience. Sally Foster of "Film Threat" said that the crux of the film was the debate about freedom of speech, and that the film was funny and thought-provoking. A. O. Scott wrote in "The New York Times": "Mr. Anderson's movie is staged as a talking-head culture-war skirmish between embattled upholders of propriety (or repression, if you prefer) and proponents of free expression (or filth), but its real lesson is that the two sides depend upon each other. Or rather, that the continued vitality of the word—its unique ability to convey emphasis, relieve stress, shock grown-ups and function as adverb, noun, verb, intensifier and what linguists call 'infix'—rests on its ability to mark an edge between the permissible and the profane". In the "Chicago Reader", Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote that the documentary was an amusing film and an educational commentary on the word. According to Glenn Garvin of "The Miami Herald", the film was an expansive merging of perspectives from politics, history and culture.