Time Out called it "A limp and shoddy farce in which neither Sellers' lifeless double-role mugging, nor a dire fish-out-of-water script by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, encourage anything more than a deepening nostalgia for the straightfaced swashbuckling of previous adaptations"; whereas in
The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote "Mr. Sellers is onscreen with himself surprisingly often, and the effect never looks trumped-up. He performs a perfect balancing act, orchestrated so well that the funny character makes the serious one even more effective, and vice versa. 'The Prisoner of Zenda' doesn't have the kind of finesse that
Blake Edwards's direction has given the
'Pink Panther' series. But the slack moments are painless enough, and they come as a fair exchange for the pleasure of Mr. Seller's [sic] artfully schhizoid [sic] company." Todd McCarthy of
Variety called the film "a tame comic vehicle for another exercise in multiple role-playing by Peter Sellers ... More than anything, pic resembles some of
Danny Kaye's comic romps of decades past, such as '
The Court Jester,' but with a lot fewer laughs." Gene Siskel of the
Chicago Tribune gave the film 2 stars out of 4 and wrote, "Everything about the Peter Sellers comedy 'Prisoner of Zenda' seems tired. Its jokes are tired, its story situations are tired, its pacing is tired, and Sellers' dual performance seems doubly lackluster." Kevin Thomas of the
Los Angeles Times called the film an "unhappy spectacle of a capable cast, bedecked with turn-of-the-century finery and placed amid settings of historic Austrian splendor, straining and straining to get laughs out of solid lead (Even Henry Mancini's score seems desperately jaunty.) The ultimate effect of the film is one of a feeling of embarrassment for all involved in its perpetration." Gary Arnold of
The Washington Post wrote "Offhand, I can't recall another comedy with an energy level as disastrously low as the one retarding 'The Prisoner of Zenda.' Although the finale generates a little slapstick turbulence, the movie looks and feels inert for the longest time. It's difficult to decide where to place the blame."
Brendan Gill of
The New Yorker wrote "There are occasions when Mr. Sellers is among the funniest men in the world, but this is not one of them." David Ansen of
Newsweek wrote "Though the budget supposedly reached $10 million, the film has the slapdash, impersonal feeling of those old studio features that were thrown together as star vehicles and rushed out against a strict deadline. But Sellers needs strong collaborators and a sturdy context. He may be our greatest comic actor but, unlike comedians who carry a film on the force of their immediately recognizable personality, Sellers's strong suit is his chameleonlike virtuosity, and chameleons are meaningless without a backdrop." Paul Taylor of
The Monthly Film Bulletin called it a "flatly directed, leadenly unfunny farce." ==References==