Most critics like this one, and several place it among Woody Allen’s best. The praise gathers around Mia Farrow, whose Depression-era waitress is called joyful, glowing and impeccable in turn, and around Allen’s script, which most find witty and unusually warm for him. The premise of a film character stepping off the screen is taken as more than a gag: reviewers credit it with saying something about why people go to the pictures, and with doing so without cynicism.
The spread is narrow at the top and then falls away. Empire finds it fond but slight. Variety is the one outright dissent, arguing that the treatment is too frivolous for a serious theme, that the ending lacks dramatic weight and that the characters around Farrow stay thin. Nobody disputes Farrow herself; even the harshest notice calls her excellent.