Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 356 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "Another marvelous chronicle of America's strivers by writer-director Sean Baker given some extra pizzazz by Mikey Madison's brassy performance, Anora is a romantic drama on the bleeding edge." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 91 out of 100, based on 62 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". On AlloCiné, the film received an average rating of 4.2 out of 5, based on 45 reviews, from French critics.
Greta Gerwig, serving as the president of the 77th Cannes Film Festival Jury, commented that "[Anora] was something we collectively felt we were transported by, we were moved by [...] It felt both new and in conversation with older forms of cinema. There was something about it that reminded us of [the] classic structures of Lubitsch or Howard Hawks, and then it did something completely truthful and unexpected."
Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair thought Anora was "a wild, profane blast." He liked Madison's "lively" performance, yet described the storytelling as somewhat repetitive. Lawson wrote "a darkness thrums under the surface of all this flirting and bickering. Ani is forever yanked this way and that, degraded and disregarded [...] I [was] torn between finding Baker's conclusions compassionate and sensing a vague whiff of something patronizing." Roger Moore of Movie Nation thought it had "gauche, bourgeois clichés". While he praised Madison, he thought Baker's editing dulled "his predictable narrative and message." Stephen Dalton of The Film Verdict disliked how "an overlong runtime, underwritten characters and some uneasy tonal wobbles dampen the film's punchy humour and propulsive energy". He wrote of one scene as "an extended struggle that lurches uneasily between slapstick comedy and brutalising assault." Dalton thought the narrative was "oddly paced", describing the "lyrical final section" as lacking "conviction or firm resolution." Justin Chang of The New Yorker wrote that Anora "plays like a wild dream—first joyous, then catastrophic, and always fiercely unpredictable." He enjoyed the "contemporary return to screwball tradition", yet thought it could have been employed better. Chang liked how it "built up a righteous steam of fury, now unleashes it against the Ivans of the world and salutes those toiling thanklessly in their employ."
Sight and Sound named Anora the second-best film of 2024, and Film Comment named it one of the ten best. In 2025, Collider named Anora the 36th-best movie of the 2020s, with Jeremy Urquhart calling it "something of a modern classic". Anora was praised by many filmmakers and actors. In March 2025, IndieWire named it the 46th-best romance film of the century, with Wilson Chapman calling it "exactly the type of love affair only he [Baker] could write: funny, lewd, sexy, tempered by class and financial considerations, and ultimately quite tragic and brutally real." IndieWire also ranked it the 34th-best film of the decade so far in June 2025. Readers of The New York Times voted it the 14th-best film of the 21st century.
The Russian-Jewish screenwriter Mikhail Idov, found it difficult to reconcile support for Anora, given the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine; he commented in the New York Times on February 27, 2025, "Its Oscar nominations, especially the best supporting actor one for Yura Borisov, have been touted by some as a national victory in Russia. Which puts me in the unsettling position of being in some truly terrible company in cheering for it."
Anora received praise from some sex workers for its depiction of the profession, which they described as a step forward from films of the past that tended to portray sex work as a social transgression worthy of condemnation. In a piece for Slate, Risdon Roberts contrasted the character of Ani with Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman, writing the former "is not a desperate or trafficked waif, nor is she a hooker with a heart of gold. Baker doesn't even set out to make [Ani] worthy of sympathy—instead, we're in awe of her prowess as she works the floor of a high-end strip club while the opening credits play ... Right away, it's clear that we're rooting for Ani not because she's down and out like Vivian—we're rooting for her because she's shrewd and in control".
Tiff Smith said, "We're seeing a fully developed character doing sex work without their profession defining them—that's what representation really is." Some said Baker's hiring of sex workers for the production as consultants and cast members was reflected in the film's attention to detail like the mundane realities of strip club life and labor issues.
Others felt that Anora reverted to regressive stereotypes about sex workers as downtrodden and "in need of saving". A UK-based sex worker said it "rehashes the 'traumatised, vulnerable sex worker' trope, which we've seen a thousand times before". Marla Cruz opined that little is revealed about Ani's life outside of sex work, and that an exploration of the "boundary between Ani the person and Ani the worker" is absent. Ayanna Dozier wrote "the film narratively builds upon and follows the social imaginaries of sex workers as subhuman projections for other people's fantasies". Cruz wrote that it is debatable "whether Ani becomes more clear-eyed about her relationship to power, men, and money throughout the film". Though Roberts appreciated Anora generally, she critiqued the ending, writing that for real-life sex workers, the true goal is not to be saved by a man, but "is about survival (or, ideally, transcending the need to survive)". She added that rather than representing the knights in shining armor archetype, "Clients are a means to an end. Money can't break your heart."
The film has apparently had a mixed response in Russia, with some critics comparing it to a re-hashing of Pretty Woman. Anora has also been portrayed as a "national victory" and a sign of warming cultural relations between Russia and the West.
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