The reviews lean favourable, with praise clustering around the songs and Agnes de Mille’s choreography rather than the performances as a whole. Admirers value the film’s preservation of the stage musical’s appeal, while the opening location photography also draws praise. The songs earn credit for expressing sexual yearning and pride naturally, and for belonging to the drama rather than merely interrupting it.
Reservations range from a soft-centred story and uneven acting to objections to the scale of the presentation, making this a fairly wide spread of opinion. Empire finds most performances underwhelming but singles out Gloria Grahame’s Ado Annie as an exception. The New Yorker is the clearest dissenter, finding the film pompous and objecting to oversized close-ups and deafening sound, though it praises Charlotte Greenwood. Even that negative review finds some charm in the songs and dances, the elements on which the consensus is strongest.