[2] The film received mostly negative reviews, with critics focusing on the characters' arbitrary and unrealistic emotional reactions, lack of successful humor and overdone production.

[2][4][5][6] Roger Ebert summarized the story as "a fog of arbitrary storytelling and desperate gimmicks, sudden revelations and unmotivated mood swings, in a movie that seems to have been written without having been thought about very much.

"[4] The Los Angeles Times' Peter Rainder opined that "the pairing of Allen and Midler, which might seem like the kind of weirdo match-up that could produce a comedy classic, never takes flight.

... Allen and Midler are such highly individual actors that they never quite seem to be in the same orbit; the series of juicy marital revelations that keep perking the movie come across as forced and schematic because we never really believe in the relationship.

[4][6] Vincent Canby of The New York Times, one of the few to give the film a positive recommendation, instead argued that Allen and Midler saved the thin and unstructured script: "Little by little, though, the stars take over their characters.