Roger Ebert of the
Chicago Sun-Times rated the film 1½ stars, calling it "another one of those road comedies where Southern roots are supposed to make boring people seem colorful". He continued, "Well, they could be, if they had anything really at risk. But the film is way too gentle to back them into a corner. They're nice people whose problems are all solved with sitcom dialogue, and the profoundly traditional screenplay makes sure that love and family triumph in the end." Despite finding the characters to be "pleasant", and feeling that "in some grudging way we are happy that they're happy," he ultimately declared that "nothing in
Waking Up in Reno ever inspired me to think of its inhabitants as anything more than markers in a screenplay."
Kevin Thomas of the
Los Angeles Times observed, "The one thing that can be said of
Waking Up in Reno is that it's rigorously consistent. Every note rings false, for writers Brent Briscoe and Mark Fauser have overlooked no
stereotypes or
clichés of small-town blue-collar speech, behavior, or tastes. Because they have not drawn from life but from a zillion other contemporary middle Americana movies and TV shows, their characters are so many times removed from reality that it is hard to blame director Jordan Brady for relentlessly condescending to their characters and plot. (This picture is way too heavy-handed to pass for
satire.)" Sean Axmaker of the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer noted "the tepid script is neither satire nor farce, and the soap opera twists are far too tame to spark the material. With the low-gear direction by Jordan Brady, you might think he has some heavy hauling to do, but the teary confessions and screechy screaming bouts are all sound and no fury . . . This half-baked production sat on Miramax's shelf for a couple of years. It's no more done now than then, merely more stale."
Peter Travers of
Rolling Stone wrote the film "offers big, fat, dumb laughs that may make you hate yourself for giving in. Ah, what the hell. The whole cast, directed by Jordan Brady with no restraint, is slumming . . . Thornton plays this low-ball farce with deceptive, masterful ease. Appreciate it."
Todd McCarthy of
Variety called the film "a hillbilly romantic comedy in which the hillbillies show up but the romance and comedy never do" and "a real what-were-they-thinking effort." He added, "Given the complete lack of urgency and inspiration in the material, [the] filmmakers have tried to give their work a semblance of life by all manner of desperate means - animated maps, jumpy editing, jokey narration and slumber-arresting musical cues, to little avail." ==Box office==