On the review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 86% based on 72 reviews, with an average rating of 6.91/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "
Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood offers plenty of prurient thrills for film fans, but beyond the gossip lies a poignantly illuminating look at decades of sexual mores."
Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 67 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". In his review for
The Hollywood Reporter,
Todd McCarthy commented: "What could have been a merely sensationalistic exposé of the private lives of then-closeted screen luminaries instead emerges, in the hands of documentarian Matt Tyrnauer as a nicely filled-out look at different eras, one secrecy-ridden and dedicated to the preservation of illusion, the other wide open and blasé about personal predilections." == Film adaptation ==