Metacritic reviews

One of this summer's more pungent pleasures: a well-made sex farce of classical proportions. If there is a horse to fall off or an airplane forced to land at the wrong airport, you may be sure Teddy will be aboard.

Fortunately, most of the film is more appealing than its premise.

A wonderful diversion through all of this is Gilda Radner, a relatively plain fellow office worker who initially thinks she’s the object of Wilder’s wanderlust and is bitterly – and vigorously – disappointed when she finds out she isn’t.

And so it goes, cleverly, amiably -- infidelity made fun. Wilder seems to have a firm hand on the controls, and the movie works best when he indulges his talent for physical comedy, which is considerable. It works less effectively when we have time to think about what is going on, and how many times we have seen it before, but the pace is quick enough that these times are few. [17 Aug 1984, p.10]

There are moments of real humor and real emotion in this otherwise frivolous sex comedy about a married man smitten with a glamorous model.

The film is fairly tolerable as these things go: Wilder takes time off from the steamrolling plot for improvised bits with some actor buddies (including Charles Grodin and Joseph Bologna), and the project as a whole is a lot less mawkish than we've come to expect from Wilder's directorial efforts. Still, it ain't exactly state of the art.

A picture as secondhand and conventional as The Woman in Red can't generate much enthusiasm, but it displays more buoyancy and incidental comic appeal than one anticipates. Wilder's judgment hasn't proved especially sound, so perhaps it's commercially prudent to pin him down to an apparently reliable pretext or scenario. Still, the results would probably have been more satisfying if his nervous keepers had permitted this sometimes misguided but endearing mutt of a funnyman a slightly longer leash in a slightly roomier kennel. [16 Aug 1984, p.B2]

Much less painful than a walk in the summer heat, but not quite as pleasant as a swim in a cool pool. [15 Aug 1984]

Menopausal male Wilder gets the frustrated hots for comely Ms Le Brock in this broad, unfunny Hollywood remake of the broad, only vaguely funny French original Pardon Mon Affaire (which at least had long-faced Jean Rochefort in its favour).

Women are treated with little respect by director Wilder, while men are portrayed as bad little boys who mean no harm. The so-called farce is just degrading prattle that drags on much longer than it should.