| Vigorous though not terribly entertaining (and overlong) debunking of the western "myth". The controversy it aroused among critics makes it more interesting to read about, than to watch. |
| MIXED |
| That American history is the creation of flamboyant lies and showmanship strikes us at first as an amusing trifle and then quickly becomes an epigram shaggy-dogging its way across two hours of eccentric Altmanship. |
|
| (Will Aitken, Take One) |
| Attacks both the myth of Buffalo Bill, and the entire apparatus of the show-business which sustained/sustains it ... a film which tries to create its own history. Most critics thought the exercise too destructive, but the Wild West-as- circus was never to be quite the same again. |
| |
| (National Film Theatre Bulletin, 1984) |
| ANTI |
| The western is an enormously resilient form, but never has that resilience been tested quite so much as in this movie. |
| |
| (Arthur Knight) |
| Altman is an ideological fashion-monger. He exploits established anti-establishment modes. He relies on predecessors to stake out and illuminate the ground, then he rides in like a black-humor Buffalo Bill expecting the cheers of a hip gallery for his safely satirical derring-do. ... About twenty-five per cent of the dialogue is simply incomprehensible. |
| |
| (Stanley Kauffmann, New Republic) |
| Shelley Duvall, an Altman regular, is rapidly becoming one of the most predictably smarmy screen presences around... What good is Altman's celebrated eight-track sound if all it conveys is a one-track mind? |
| |
| (John Simon, National Review) |
| Altman makes the point that Buffalo Bill was a flamboyant fraud, then belabors it for two hours. Not without interest, but still one of the director's duller movies. |
| |
| (Leonard Maltin, Maltin's Movie & Video Guide, 2004) |
