Most critics like Fame without loving it. The reviews lean mixed to positive, and the praise clusters around one thing: the energy. The song-and-dance numbers, the bustle of the New York school setting and a cast of young performers who look as if they are working rather than posing are what people remember. Den of Geek credits the film with rich characters and a willingness to take on difficult subjects without softening them, and Collider picks out Irene Cara’s uncomfortable audition scene as the strongest thing in it.
The reservations are about shape rather than spirit. Empire finds the dramatic storylines left dangling, and Den of Geek calls the film uneven and dated in places. Radio Times rates it thoroughly entertaining but less fun than Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone. The spread is narrow, with nobody dismissing it and nobody rapturous, though several of the older reviews survive only in fragments, so the picture is thinner than seven reviews suggests.