Most critics are warm about Ruggles of Red Gap, and the praise clusters on Charles Laughton. The reviews describe his butler, lost in a card game and carried west, as droll, transformative and plainly funny, a performance that shows a lighter side of him than usual. Leo McCarey’s direction is credited with keeping the pace quick and the handling fresh, and the supporting cast is thought to hold its own. The Gettysburg Address scene in the saloon comes up again and again as the moment critics remember.
The spread is narrow, with one exception. The New Yorker, writing on release, finds the gags and situations too familiar and calls the picture a disappointment, while conceding the performances and admitting the audience laughed. The later reviews are, if anything, fonder than the early ones, reading the film as a gentle picture of American equality and the kind of quiet comedy nobody makes any more.