Boleslaw Sulik of the
British Film Institute wrote that the film was "without question, Wajda's saddest international failure; he shot it on Yugoslav locations in English, on a slender budget and a ridiculously tight schedule, with Lionel Stander woefully miscast as a medieval monk." American film critic
Andrew Sarris said the film was an "incredibly stilted attempt to link one of the children's crusades of 13th century Europe to an embarrassingly idyllic homosexual conspiracy." Film critic Robert Taylor had harsh words for the film as well, observing it is "poorly written and directed." He went on to say the movie "deserved all the laughter, hoots and hisses it received from its film festival audience." In his review for the
San Diego Reader, Jay Sanford opined that "what makes the storytelling so intriguing is how each of the main characters tells their own tale in the form of frequently alarming confessions to the one adult accompanying the children." Albert Johnson of the
San Francisco Film Society said "Wajda has gleaned splendid performances from his young actors, and Lionel Stander plays the monk with gruff-voiced compassion and total seriousness; the director has created a vivid series of images for his tragic tale of innocence overthrown, in which truth is the real murderer of idealized hopes." Ted Mahar of
The Oregonian said the film was a "literally laughable story of how a religious crusade was indirectly inspired by a homosexual triangle and some blundered adolescent sex; the whole film was more blundered than any adolescent sex." ==See also==