Critical response Roger Ebert of the
Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four and called it "clearly Mike Nichols' best film. It sets out to tell us certain things about these few characters and their sexual crucifixions, and it succeeds. It doesn't go for cheap or facile laughs, or inappropriate symbolism, or a phony kind of contemporary feeling ... Nicholson, who is possibly the most interesting new movie actor since
James Dean, carries the film, and his scenes with Ann-Margret are masterfully played."
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times was also positive, calling it "a nearly ideal collaboration of directorial and writing talents" that was "not only very funny, but in a casual way—in the way of something observed in a half-light—more profound than much more ambitious films." Writing in
Film Quarterly,
Ernest Callenbach called it "a solid and interesting achievement—as was [Nichols']
Virginia Woolf. It is a cold and merciless film, but then artists are not required to stand in for the Red Cross. They document disasters, and it is we the viewers who must clean them up, in our own lives."
Gavin Millar of
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote, "Though not the last word on the subject, it's still a telling and unhysterical assault on
male chauvinism; and if that's fashionable, it's not unwelcome."
Charles Champlin of the
Los Angeles Times was less enthused, calling the film "the iciest, most merciless and most repellent major (and seriously intended) motion picture in a very long time." Champlin thought that Nicholson had "some powerful moments" but his character "is never comprehensible as anything but a clinical study, although the study offers no clues to how he got that way." Arthur D. Murphy of
Variety called it "a rather superficial and limited probe of American male sexual hypocrisies." Gary Arnold of
The Washington Post wrote, "I wouldn't mind having a nickel for every moviegoer who walks out of
Carnal Knowledge feeling cheated and despondent. The basic problem with the film is that it's the artistic equivalent of the sort of thing it purports to be satirizing and abhorring: it's a cold, calculating, unfeeling view of cold, calculating, unfeeling relationships."
Gene Siskel of the
Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and called it "basically a one-note story ... The characters do not change or learn; they do not even repeat their mistakes in very interesting ways."
Pauline Kael of
The New Yorker wrote, "This movie says not merely that there are some people like these, but that this is
it—that is, that this movie, in its own satirical terms, presents a more accurate view of men and women than conventional movies do. That may be the case, but the movie isn't convincing."
Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively gives the film a score of 89% based on reviews from 35 critics, with an
average rating of 7.70/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Although it comes lopsidedly from the male gaze,
Carnal Knowledge is a sexually frank and ferociously well-acted battle between the sexes."
Accolades ==Home media==