Critical response Paradise Alley received negative reviews from many critics, who often compared the film unfavorably to
Rocky.
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times (who had also written one of the harshest reviews of
Rocky) called it "a phony, attitudinizing, self-indulgent mess ... If there had been just a tiny bit of wit involved, or a consistent point of view, or genuine feeling,
Paradise Alley might have been an engaging throwback to the true B pictures of yesteryear. As it is, it's
Rocky warmed over and then thrown out."
Pauline Kael of
The New Yorker also panned the film, writing: "As a director, Stallone shows no more feeling for visual modulation than as Cosmo he does for vocal modulation. In all his capacities here, he's trying to get a hammerlock on our emotions. You feel he'd reach out from the screen and grab you by the throat if he could ... As a writer, he's a primitive mining the mass media, without any apparent awareness of how stale his ideas are. Doesn't he know that there are a lot of us who have seen the same plays and movies he has? Aren't we even expected to remember
Rocky? Stallone tries to work our emotions in exactly the same ways, and there's no surprise to the shamelessness this time." Gary Arnold of
The Washington Post wrote: "Maybe there's something to be said for Stallone overreaching himself this early in his starring career. He may be compelled to take a more realistic look at what he can and cannot do after audiences exit shaking their heads over the scatterbrained mentality that seems to control
Paradise Alley. Stallone has a distinctive, funny presence and a flair for spontaneous slapstick and sentiment, but he appears to be a miserable coordinator and ringmaster." Writing in
New York,
David Denby found the film to have "some moments of warmth in its portrait of gaudy neighborhood bars and dance halls, gangsters, bimbos, and hangers-on, but the movie is so hyperbolic and synthetic you don't believe a minute of it." John Gault of ''
Maclean's wrote: "The climactic wrestling sequence is so derivative of Rocky'' you almost start humming '
Gonna Fly Now'. But
Rocky did what every good fairy tale does: it temporarily suspended disbelief, made the implausible plausible. That works only if there is a high degree of consistency in plot and characterization, and
Paradise Alley doesn't have it."
Gene Siskel gave the film three out of four stars, praising the "rich characters" and declaring it "one of the most colorful films of the year." In a separate article, he called it "a thoroughly engaging film—until its last reel, when Stallone slaps on a conventional, upbeat ending that is all wrong for this movie. It's the ending of
Rocky all over again, as Stallone and his older brother in the movie go unpunished for exploiting their baby brother, the brutish giant ... They don't deserve the same fate as
Rocky. And to give them the same fate is to insult the audience's intelligence."
Variety gave the film a mostly positive review, calling it "
Rocky rewritten by
Damon Runyon ... It's an upbeat, funny, nostalgic film populated by colorful characters, memorable more for their individual moments than for their parts in the larger story." The review's only point of criticism was that "The relationship between the men and their women is never explored and is the one unsatisfying element in the film. The women have no life beyond their men; they are types who exist only as companions."
Quentin Tarantino, writing in 2022, said "This film is Stallone's vision and aesthetic, unfiltered, undiluted, and delivered full bore in your face." The film was nominated for Worst Picture at the
1978 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards. On review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an aggregated score of 40% based on five critic reviews, with an average rating of 4/10. On
Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100 based on eight critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". ==In popular culture==