Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 25% of 20 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.3/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 54 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews..
Roger Ebert called Life Stinks "a warmhearted new comedy", opining that while Brooks did an exemplary job of finding humor in the dismal subject matter, the film is much less comedy-focused than most of his films, taking a sensitive and poignant approach to its characters. He also highly praised Brooks's acting in the film, and concluded, "There is a certain tension in Life Stinks between the bull-headed optimism of the Brooks character, and the hopeless reality of the streets, and that’s what the movie is about." Marjorie Baumgarten of The Austin Chronicle, in contrast, was unimpressed with the film's message, arguing that it is implausible that a man like Goddard Bolt would not succeed at life on the streets, and that the only places where the film succeeds are in its humorous moments rather than its attempts to convey a message. Summing up "The problem with Life Stinks is that it's got its heart in the right place but not a whole lot else," she gave it two out of five stars. She added that it was a mistake for Brooks to attempt a more serious film, an opinion shared by Janet Maslin, who remarked that Brooks "has a much surer sense of how to lampoon such a figure [as Goddard Bolt] than of how to turn him into anyone nice." She regarded the subject matter as too depressing for most of the humor to work, and also criticized the uncharacteristically polite nature of Brooks's jokes in the film. However, she praised the performances of Lesley Ann Warren and Teddy Wilson.
In a review of the 2015 Blu-Ray release, Matt Brunson of Creative Loafing Charlotte commented, "Mel Brooks strikes out with this sizable flop that's perhaps surpassed only by 1995's Dracula: Dead and Loving It as the auteur's worst." Citing the failed efforts at social satire and absence of Mel Brooks's usual collection of leads, he gave it one-and-a-half stars.
Despite the film's failure, Brooks later cited Life Stinks, along with The Producers and The Twelve Chairs, as one of the films he's most proud of. In his 2021 memoir All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business, Brooks also wrote that he considered the movie his best work as an actor.
