Critical reception
The film received generally positive reviews upon its release between November 1978 and February 1979. Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called the film "a whizbang and hugely enjoyable exercise in nostalgia for the kind of all-singing, all-talking, all-dancing, all-corny movies that everybody says nobody makes any more. It celebrates, with accuracy, skill and warm affection, the plotty and propulsive film delights a later generation speaks of fervently as real, by God, movie movies, whence the title. The writers, Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller, have concocted a whole double feature: a fight film in period black and white and a musical in all the colors of a hyped-up rainbow, the two digest-sized movies linked by one of those hyperthyroid previews of coming attractions that are still, and they often were, better than the movie itself turns out to be." [11] Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that "it seems so effortlessly funny that I suspect that the real intelligence and discipline that guide the project will be overlooked. Mr. Gelbart and Mr. Keller not only appreciate the comic uses of the mixed metaphor—one that is driven into the ground to the bursting point—but, more importantly, they have recreated the efficiency and manic, upbeat innocence of those Depression pictures. This has to do with more than screen styles—wacky montages and attention-getting wipes and fades, which anyone can imitate. The movie's spirits are high even when its eyes are filled with tears. The film makers genuinely like their models." [12] Canby later ranked it as the fourth-best film of 1978, writing:
Forget the title—it's awful—but the film, Stanley Donen's remembrance of double‐features past, is a delight, composed of parodies of two 30's‐style pictures: a boxing melodrama called “Dynamite Hands” and a backstage musical, “Baxter's Beauties of 1933,” which means it would have come out in 1932. George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere star in both films and receive super support from Barry Bostwick, Barbara Harris, Eli Wallach, Ann Reinking, Rebecca York, Art Carney and Kathleen Beller. The script, which takes particular delight in scrambled language (people are inclined to say things like “I heard it in the papers”), is by Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller. [13]
Desmond Ryan of The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the film "arrives at a time when much of what passes for comedy on the screen can be dismissed as parodies lost. That it is infinitely superior to the lame thrusts of such films as The Cheap Detective and The World's Greatest Lover is a tribute to both [Stanley Donen's] professional skills and the exuberant affection he brings to the task." [14] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film a three-and-a-half star rating, observing that it was "the idea of the very clever Larry Gelbart, who has written a number of M*A*S*H episodes and the comedy hit Oh, God! . Gelbart worked with Mel Brooks on the old Sid Caesar Your Show of Shows , and what Gelbart has done with Movie, Movie is affectionately kid '30s melodrama in the same way Brooks kidded '30s horror films in Young Frankenstein . Movie, Movie is full of in-jokes about '30s tear-jerkers. You will spend half your time looking for and laughing at the cliches." [15] Tom McElfresh of The Cincinnati Enquirer called it "a film that carefully, affectionately, kids the socks off "those movies they used to make" back in the '30s. But—and here's the wonder of all the wonders in it—he has managed, somehow, to sweetly preserve the genuinely entertaining, if genuinely corny, impact of the same old movies he's teasing." [16] Susan Stark of the Detroit Free Press said that "Donen gives us satire of the sweetest kind, looking back with affection upon the kinds of stories the movies gave us 40 years ago, and also reverting to the style in which those screen stories were told. Those who remember montages with train wheels clacking out the passage of time and newspaper headlines shouting advancements of plot will get nostalgia's special pleasure out of 'Movie, Movie.' Those who have never seen that kind of montage, or the use of the 'iris' to mark scene changes, or even the obligatory overhead 'kaleidoscope' shot of a Busby Berkeley production number, will find the film educational as well as entertaining." [17] Donna Chernin of The Plain Dealer remarked that "recent comic tributes to bygone film genres (specifically Mel Brooks' 'Young Frankenstein' and 'Silent Movie') cantered along humorously for a while, but eventually trotted out too much clumsy slapstick. "Movie Movie" gallops along beautifully; most brilliantly, the creators know when to quit. Wilted cliches becomes crisp quips, especially enhanced by the straight delivery of the cast." [18]
Corbin Patrick of The Indianapolis Star said that "the clever scripts as written by Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller do not hold these memory gems up to ridicule. They are treated fondly, and in good humor. And the playing by George Scott. Trish Van Devere and others, most of whom appear in both segments, is beautiful." [19] David Mannweiler of The Indianapolis News said that "if this inviting spoof of the highly stylized Hollywood formula films of the 1930s is seen in the right frame of mind, it qualifies as the funniest movie of 1978, the year in which it was released. It certainly is much more sophisticated and energetic than recent parodies of "old" films by Mel Brooks ('Silent Movie') or Neil Simon ('The Cheap Detective')." [20] John M. McGuire of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote that it "comes dangerously close to being an overdose of schmaltz. But that's the beauty of this delightfully wacky takeoff of a 1930's double feature, it never quite reaches the point of 'enough, enough.' Of course it helps to have George C. Scott, Eli Wallach, Art Carney, Red Buttons and Trish Van Devere in your repertory company, playing such diverse roles as a grandfatherly fight manager; a dandified musical comedy producer; an Oil Can Harry gangster; an Oil Can Harry World War I flying ace; a slightly punchy prize-fight corner man; Pop, the stage door watchman; a heart-as-pure-as-gold-librarian and a sultry, temperamental, but fading Broadway star. It also helps, in my opinion, to have Ann Reinking glittering-up the place. This is her first movie part, and the dancing sensation of the musical, 'Chicago,' plays a steamy-blonde movie vamp the equal of Mae West or Jean Harlow." [21] Bruce McCabe of The Boston Globe called the film "first-rate fun" and wrote that it "succeeds as one movie because each movie within it works. They work because Stanley Donen, the producer and director, brought many MGM musicals to the screen." [22] George Anderson of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said it was "like all the films you grew up with, yet it's like no other movie around right now. That seeming contradiction explains its special appeal." [23] A critic for the San Francisco Chronicle called it "a delightful, funny, novel and loving parody of the melodramatic dramas and musicals of the '30s." [24]
Eleanor Ringel of The Atlanta Constitution called the parodies "dead-on". [25] Perry Stewart of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram said that "a picture like Movie Movie, which lovingly satirizes the sentimental film fare of the 1930s, could be expected to fall on its film can in the cynical Seventies. But all I can say is I enjoyed it." [26] William Mootz of The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote that it "happily recalls the innocent pleasures of going to the Bijou back in the 1930s, when talkies were young and so was Hollywood. It floated blithely Into the Showcase Cinemas [on January 26, 1979] to brighten this generally sad-sack movie season." [27] Don Morrison of The Minneapolis Star called it "an absolutely delectable movie, a double-whammy spoof on the old movie-type movies of 40 years ago. It carries off this risky assignment with such bouncing style that you are hugging yourself with glee at every hokey scene and every luscious line of dopey dialogue. It amounts to a paste-up of specimens from 1930s Warner Brothers movies not the actual footage, but adroitly skewed museum-replicas of the ideas, attitudes, characters, stories and settings of that studio-factory's output, which kept myriad Depression-era filmgoers happily entertained." [28] Terry Lawson of The Journal-Herald in Dayton, Ohio, called it "a hilarious, loving tribute to 1930s film fare, particularly the films that originated at Warner Brothers' studios. And the two hours you spend laughing your way through Movie Movie may be the best time you've had at a movie house since Animal House ." [29]
Dave Chenowith of the Montreal Gazette wrote his review of the film under the pseudonym of Louella Hopper, saying that "it's so good to see a movie that knows what entertainment is all about—good, clean fun like we used to see when Jack Warner and that nice Mr. Goldfish were still alive—not like so much of the so-called 'hard-hitting' violence and dirt the studios shovel out today. (Remember what that poor Sen. McCarthy once told me in the MGM cafeteria: 'A cynic is just a Commie who wants to be rich.' Wasn't that the truth. . .) Well, Movie Movie is something different. Director Stanley Donen (I remember him when he was still in flannels, directing Singin' in the Rain ) has made two movies in one and they're both beautiful takeoffs on those terrific Grade-B films of the 1930s. That's why The Gazette has asked me to come out of retirement and tell you all about it." [30]
Internationally, Alexander Walker of the London Evening Standard called it "the happiest package deal on the current screen" [31] while John Lapsley of the Sydney Sun-Herald called it "an appreciative send-up of films the way they were in 1933 when Hollywood's answer to the Depression was a flood of fairy tales about shoe-shine boys becoming stars" [32] and Colin Bennett of The Age in Melbourne called it "a lot of innocent nostalgic fun". [33]
Not everyone praised it, however. Rex Reed said it was "the latest in a long and boring series of remakes", and added that "all they've proved is that they can make old movies that are just as dumb as they made them 40 years ago; in their attempts at parody, they've ended up creating the same thing they're sending up." [34] Clyde Gilmour of the Toronto Star wrote that "George Burns introduces the film (at the Uptown 3) in a prologue obviously tacked on at the last minute—and the famous old funnyman doesn't say anything funny. True enough, there are some laughs in what follows. For me, however, there are not nearly enough of them in this fond lampoon of the sorts of movies that were being cranked out on an assembly-line basis at the Warner Bros. studio in the ’30s." [35]
Four reviews of the film are listed on Rotten Tomatoes, which does not have a sufficient score on the film as of 2023. [36]
