Most critics come away well disposed. Nearly every review, including the unfavourable ones, settles on Topol’s Tevye as the reason to watch: a performance most describe as warm, witty and bombastic, carrying a huge production largely on its own. The score is the other point of agreement, with John Williams’s orchestrations credited for improving on the stage version, and several reviews single out the photography, the candle-lit wedding sequence in particular, and the real Eastern European locations.
The spread is wide. The New York Times argues that enlarging the show onto real landscapes drains it of the intimacy that made it work, and that the performances and choreography suffer from the literal approach. Time Out and the Evening Standard both find it too sentimental and too eager to be loved, the latter calling it unremarkable as a musical despite its star. Even admirers concede it is long, and Collider notes the first hour drags. The more recent reappraisals are noticeably warmer than the reviews of 1971.