The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Who but the British could present a vision of universal corruption, of a world whose unique moral laws are egotism and treachery, and make a family comedy out of it? Fred Midway pimps for one daughter; his wife counsels the other to get what she wants by withholding conjugal rights from her husband; his son (in an unconscious echo of
Godard's
Week-End (1967)?) spreads his compliant girl-friend wide-thighed in the road to draw her charms to the attention of a passing tycoon: and we're supposed to laugh, not even af them, but with them. Smirking equally at himself and the audience, Fred Midway is offered us as a kind of contemporary folk hero, a cynical moralist and irrepressible affirmation of the working man's superior guile and lucidity; but emphatically not a revolutionary hero – eager only to excite the envy of his neighbours by ending up with the largest slice of the cake. Warren Mitchell plays him as a slightly smoother version of
Alf Garnett; but Garnett is funny because he's shown to be an anachronism and no one else takes him seriously, whereas Midway's meteoric rise makes him uncomfortably more sinister. True, if one can ignore its pernicious premises, the script has its moments of verbose wit ... and both Adrienne Posta and Kenneth Cranham (in a less subtle version of the character he created in
Orton's
Loot) give impeccably timed and relatively credible performances as the only couple in the film to make love for no economic motive.
All the Way Up may have been intended as a biting indictment of the permissive society; in the tasteless event, its moral abdication is far greater than Fred Midway's."
The Observer called it "very funny, uncomfortable, knowing cinema." The
Evening Standard said it was "an extremely funny and savage attack on middle class pretensions."
Variety said "treatment is brisk, spasmodically funny though sometimes overbusy and strident."
Leslie Halliwell said: "Crudely farcical adaptation of a thoughtful comedy of its time; the treatment works in fits and starts but leaves one in no mood for the talkative finale."
Filmink said it was "possibly another Cohen film from this period that was made too late to have impact."
Box office According to historian Paul Moody the film's "eventual lack of impact at the box office, in contrast to the
On the Buses series that would follow, taught Cohen a valuable lesson in what the British public would pay to see, and this was the last such ‘middle-class’ comedy that EMI would produce." ==Certification==