The film-critics aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported 95 percent of critics gave a positive review, with an average score of 8/10 and the consensus, "The Queen of Versailles is a timely, engaging, and richly drawn portrait of the American Dream improbably composed of equal parts compassion and schadenfreude.

"[3] The New York Times' A. O. Scott called the film "A gaudy guilty pleasure that is also a piece of trenchant social criticism", and said, the movie starts out in the mode of reality television, resembling the pilot for a new "Real Housewives" franchise or a reboot of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous."

Before long, though, it takes on the coloration of a Theodore Dreiser novel – not quite an American tragedy but a sprawling, richly detailed study of ambition, desire and the wild swings of fortune that are included in the price of the capitalist ticket.

[4]The Economist called it "an uncomfortably intimate glimpse of a couple's struggle with a harsh new reality," concluding that "the film's great achievement is that it invites both compassion and Schadenfreude.

[14][15] Directing that the case be administratively closed, Conway ordered the defendants to file and serve, on or before May 1, 2013, and every three months after that, a status report regarding the arbitration proceedings.

Furthermore, he wrote that "There is nothing taken away by the viewer of the Motion Picture that is inconsistent with the fundamental reality that the global recession created a crisis for Westgate causing it to have to reluctantly give up its interest in PH Towers," and "To a great extent this is derived from the words of David, Jackie, and Richard Siegel themselves.

Lastly, Rifkin found that Westgate failed to show how it was damaged from the documentary, saying that the company "did not remotely establish the type of malice required for a defamation claim on behalf of a public figure.

[25] As a privately held enterprise, it is unknown how much of the $1.2 billion in debt Westgate Resorts continues to owe its lenders (originally reported by Businessweek on March 15, 2012).