By Chan's own assessment, "The French Democracy" is unpolished. "The Washington Post" found "broken English" in the subtitles, and "BusinessWeek" deemed them "stilted and ungrammatical". Josh Lee of PopMatters deemed the character animations of "The Movies" too exaggerated for the film's serious message; he felt that they made the film's depiction of police brutality seem better suited for the silent film comedy series "Keystone Cops". ', a French Internet publication about media issues related to immigration, called the characters "'" (very ethnicized).