While many critics saw the film as a series of uneven vignettes, Roger Ebert thought that "the very lightness of the premise gives the film a kind of freedom. We glimpse revealing moments in lives, instead of following them to one of those manufactured movie conclusions that pretends everything has been settled." Ebert was so engrossed by Christopher Lloyd's performance that he almost forgot about the film's title object, and liked the movie as a whole while acknowledging its vignette construction.