Reception
Reviews of the film were mixed, with Rotten Tomatoes giving the film 56%. Dennis Harvey, writing for Variety, was generally positive, and commended Waitt for his willingness "to appear a complete (though endearing) ass", while suspecting he was not quite as dumb as he appeared. The Independent, The Independent On Sunday, The Times, The Financial Times and The Sun all gave the movie four stars.
The Daily Telegraph's Mike McCahill, doubting the veracity of Waitt's story, concluded that "It's a display of gross bad faith both as documentarist and lover, and its subject probably deserves never to get laid again."
On the other hand, Toby Young writing in The Independent, despite thinking that "If Waitt was an employee of the BBC he'd be dragged before a series of committees before being tossed into the street" nonetheless concluded that "this doesn't matter at all" as the film was "so funny I thought I would pass out".
Read more about this topic: A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)