Rotten Tomatoes,
review aggregator, reports that 37% of 19 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating was 5/10. Glenn Lovell of
Variety called it "a cloying, mechanically plotted comedy."
Lawrence Van Gelder of
The New York Times wrote, "The graceful literary and directorial touch of Morgan J. Freeman turns these youngsters into individuals rather than cinema's customary caricatures." John Anderson of the
Los Angeles Times wrote, "It's a small story, perhaps even an ephemeral movie, but
Desert Blue also has a novelistic capacity for character and setting, without either the maudlin sentimentality or gratuitous vulgarity of most teen-oriented movies."
Roger Ebert of
The Chicago Sun-Times rated it three out of four stars and compared it to
The Last Picture Show and
U Turn, saying that it is the "herbal tea" version of the latter. Lisa Schwarzbaum of
Entertainment Weekly gave the film a grade of C and described the setting as "yet another indie drama set in a burg reminiscent, by way of aggressive eccentricity, of TV's
Northern Exposure." ==References==