Critical
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Two sequences, one involving Charlie Drake's activities in the boiler room, the other a nightmare in which he plays all the parts from prisoner to judge in a navy court-martial, have the berserk lunacy of some of Drake's television shows: the humour is crude but vigorous. The rest of the film is in the worst traditions of British farce – flat-footed, ineffectual and coy." [4]
Variety wrote: "The screenplay is flabby and dialog mainly flat. It seems that director David MacDonald was trying not to let Drake monopolize the action, and the result is an uneasy mixture of slapstick and straight comedy. Of the remainder of the cast, Miss Heywood looks pretty, but unconvincing as the chief raider. Cecil Parker offers another of his well-timed studies in pomposity while John Turner makes a stalwart, pleasant hero. ... Regrettably it must be recorded that Petiicoats Pirates provides too few laughs on the ocean wave." [5]
Leslie Halliwell called the film an: "uncertain comedy fantasy." [6]
The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 1/5 stars, writing: "In his third tilt at movie stardom, TV comic Charlie Drake again finds himself up a well-known creek without a script. This time, however, he's only got himself to blame, as he co-wrote this woeful comedy, in which he plays a timid stoker ordered to disguise himself as a Wren in order to recover a battleship hijacked by a mutinous all-woman crew." [7]
