1991. It has an 85% approval rating on the review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes from 33 critics. Peter Travers from Rolling Stone deemed it "the most revealing and outrageously funny piece of pop demythologizing since Dont Look Back"; praising its "freshness and snap" but criticizing Madonna's "lost-lamb routine" in the scene when she visits her mother's grave. He concluded his review: "you may not leave Truth or Dare loving Madonna, but you'll respect her as a force of nature". Roger Ebert gave it three and a half stars. He wrote that "unlike most rock documentaries, the real heart of this film is backstage, and the onstage musical segments, while effectively produced, seem obligatory - they're not the reason she wanted to make this film". Ebert was particularly impressed by Madonna's work ethic. Writing for The New York Times, Janet Maslin noted that "Madonna has succeeded in taking on real importance. [Truth or Dare] combines galvanizing, well-photographed color scenes of her onstage act with grainy black-and-white glimpses of her offstage one, sometimes making interesting efforts to reconcile the two". Also from The New York Times, Joe Coscarelli felt that some of the film's best moments were Madonna's interactions with other celebrities. Gawkers Rich Juzwiak opined it was "sometimes infuriating, but it's rarely less than fantastically entertaining. A relic of a time before grueling media training, when pop stars didn't hang on the approval of their publicists before talking". Bustles Amy Roberts called it "raw and honest, it never felt cynical (and still doesn't)". For The Washington Posts Martha Sherrill, "It's fresh. It’s outrageous. It’s unreality in black-and-white. And it’s certainly more entertaining than Madonna in person". Louis Virtel from Paper praised the live footage as "some of Madonna's most exhilarating live work" and "the way the movie incorporates the stories of Madonna's dancers, most of them gay, is one of its richest features". Slant Magazines Keith Watson called it "less of a concert film than an elaborately constructed exegesis on pop mythmaking and the construction of identity", awarding it three stars. Noel Murray from The A.V. Club praised some of the film's "raunchy" parts; "compared to the increasingly brittle, cautiously patrician Madonna of recent years, it’s a kick to see her so playful". Murray also highlighted the scenes in which Madonna talks to her father on the phone and meets an old childhood friend as "the times when we do seem to