In comparing the film to its predecessor, "Dr. No", Richard Roud, writing in "The Guardian", said that "From Russia with Love" "didn't seem quite so lively, quite so fresh, or quite so rhythmically fast-moving." He went on to say that "... the film is highly immoral in every imaginable way; it is neither uplifting, instructive nor life-enhancing. Neither is it great film-making. But it sure is fun." Writing in "The Observer", Penelope Gilliatt noted that "The way the credits are done has the same self-mocking flamboyance as everything else in the picture." Gilliatt went on to say that the film manages "to keep up its own cracking pace, nearly all the way. The set-pieces are a stunning box of tricks". The critic for "The Times" wrote of Bond that he is "the secret ideal of the congenital square, conventional in every particular ... except in morality, where he has the courage—and the physical equipment—to do without thinking what most of us feel we might be doing ..." The critic thought that overall, "the nonsense is all very amiable and tongue-in-cheek and will no doubt make a fortune for its devisers".