Even the film's most staunch detractors enjoyed Hathaway's efforts, with several critics comparing Hathaway to a "young" Julia Roberts. Lacey felt Mia "does a reasonable impression of a fashion model going through a geek-chic phase", comparing her to Roberts and predicting her successful film career. Asher Price, reviewing for "The Denver Post", lauded Andrews' contribution while identifying Hathaway as "a good match for" the veteran actress. Branding the film "a surprisingly sophisticated comedy" that avoids common teen tropes, Price enjoyed the training sequences but felt Mia's confidence is drawn solely from her physical transformation, describing the latter as "The only disturbing part of the film". Despite being unimpressed with his direction, the "New York Post" film critic Lou Lumenick commended Marshall for "showcas Hathaway’s star quality in a way that’s more than a little reminiscent of his most famous film, "Pretty Woman"" and praised Elizondo's contribution. "ReelViews"' James Berardinelli panned the film, accusing Marshall of exploring a predictable plot "in a thoroughly uninteresting way" by "reducing characters to types and heaping mounds of saccharine and false sentiment on top". Film critic Roger Ebert dismissed the film as a "swamp of recycled ugly duckling stories, with occasional pauses in the marsh of sitcom cliches and the bog of Idiot Plots", finding it predictable, poorly edited and Hathaway too physically attractive to offer a convincing transformation. "Salon" film critic Stephanie Zacharek reviewed the film as "so aggressively bland and inoffensive that it practically recedes from the screen". Zacharek is also one of the few film critics to deride the leads' performances, dismissing Andrews as "so shellacked and precise ... that it makes you want to run out of the theater and roll around in the dirt".