It was theatrically released a few days later on September 13, 1996, just weeks ahead of Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks' directorial debut That Thing You Do!, which also covered the early to mid-1960s pop music scene and featured original, retro-styled songs on the soundtrack. Grace of My Heart grossed $660,313 worldwide. Critical response David Ansen of Newsweek praised the film and wrote while it "is not the smoothest trip" story-wise, "Anders's rough edges are more than offset by the story's contagious vitality...Denise's funky journey to self-discovery is a fresh feminist take on an era that has always been seen through men's eyes. It may not be precision-tooled, but it's triumphantly alive."Time Out wrote, "There's a lovely sequence about a third of the way into Anders' delightful movie which follows a song from conception - the street scene that inspires it - through the writing, to the recording session. This seamlessly edited passage swings like the snappy '60s girl pop it emulates. Like the film as a whole, it works as a musical in its own right, and as history and critique of the pop process." Critics roundly praised the film's music, particularly the Brill Building scenes, and lauded the film's approach of pairing popular songwriters of the 1960s with contemporary artists. Mark Caro of the Chicago Tribune wrote:What Anders captures is the feel of the time: the nervous thrill of singing a song you love; the sanctified atmosphere of a recording studio, with red padded walls that match the singer's lipstick and a slit of a window that reveals a live bassist; the songwriter's excitement in realizing that songs can be about people's actual lives and still be commercial; the breathlessness of keeping up with an industry that may love a cappella vocal groups one day and rock bands the next.Criticism centered on the film's shift of the action from New York City to California to center on Denise's relationship with Jay, with many arguing it is where the story loses focus. Roger Ebert praised the music and Douglas' performance, but said Anders tries to cover too much ground and would have liked a less condensed story. In a 2020 episode of his podcast Kermode on Film, film critic Mark Kermode named Grace of My Heart number one on his countdown of the top five most underrated films of all time. Jim Hemphill of Filmmaker wrote the film "feels both