On
Rotten Tomatoes the film has a critic rating of 50% from 62 reviews, with an average rating of 5.66/10. The site's consensus reads, "
Two Girls and a Guy has an intriguing premise and a talented trio of leads, but doesn't do quite enough with any of them to make the end result truly worth a watch". In September 1997,
Todd McCarthy of
Variety labelled it "a lively, if slender, perpetuation of the battle between the sexes on a modern battleground", adding, "critical reaction will no doubt run the gamut for this sexually frank, exploratory piece, with its box office fate hanging in the balance of whether the resulting controversy makes it a priority for young discriminating viewers or a turn-off, especially among women." Writing from the 1997 Telluride Film Festival,
Entertainment Weekly's Chris Willman said that the film received a "polarized response", claiming that some saw it as an endorsement of infidelity. However, he noted that "mass walkouts were reserved for 23-year-old
Kids scribe
Harmony Korine’s directorial debut,
Gummo, another verite parade of teens behaving badly (and killing cats in the process)." On an April 1998 episode of their program,
Siskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs up. In his other review for the
Chicago Sun-Times,
Roger Ebert commented on Robert Downey Jr.'s performance: "Downey, whatever his problems, is a fine actor, smart and in command of his presence, and he's persuasive here as he defends himself: 'I'm an actor. And actors lie.' There is a show-stopping scene when he looks at himself in a mirror and warns himself to get his act together."
Janet Maslin of
The New York Times said: "When actors fall into tabloid hell, their careers too often are already on the skids. But Downey, who recently completed jail time for drug-related problems, proves again here that he is, professionally speaking, at the height of his powers.
Two Girls and a Guy bursts into life as soon as this wildly inventive actor saunters into the story bellowing
Vivaldi, and from that point on, it hangs on his every word. The two women here, especially the talented and ravishing Ms. Graham, aren't able to do anything of comparable interest." A more negative review at the time came from
Deseret News, who gave the film only half a star. They write, "featuring one of the worst film performances in recent history (from newcomer Natasha Gregson Wagner, daughter of the late
Natalie Wood), this wildly over-the-top black comedy about two women who confront their 'shared' boyfriend doesn't score with any of the points it tries to make." Jack Mathews of the
Los Angeles Times criticized the structure of the film, saying: "
Two Girls and a Guy takes a lot of dubious side trips and ends with an event so unexpected it could have come from a different movie.
Legacy In her 2014 book
Robert Downey Jr. from Brat to Icon: Essays on the Film Career, Erin E. MacDonald said "the entire premise of the film could be read as a stand-in for drug intervention." She notes that Blake's behavior in the film "has an undeniable subtext of Downey's real life destruction and denial. To hear his pathetic attempts to cover his transgressions is to witness a man who knows all too well the feeling of being trapped. There's an uncomfortable degree of closeness to the actor's tabloid persona that Toback is clearly exploiting." When ranking the 59 films of Robert Downey Jr. in 2021, Kyle Wilson of
Screen Rant placed
Two Girls and a Guy 39th, calling it "a lively but indulgent roller-coaster ride that's saved by a seductively compelling performance by Downey." In a 2023 interview with
The New York Times, Downey Jr. reflected on the film, and a part in the bathroom scene in which he looks at himself in the mirror. He said, "I learned a lot from that one take. That was an end-of-the-day, we’ve got a mag of film left, here’s a dumb idea, and yet I learned as much from that as anything I had ever done up to that, with the exception of
Chaplin." == References ==