 Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" observed, "The music is resolutely unmemorable.The lyrics sound as if they'd been written by someone high on root beer, and the book is familiar history—compressed here, stretched there—that has been gagged up and paced to Broadway's not inspiring standards.Yet Peter H. Hunt's screen version of "1776" ... insists on being so entertaining and, at times, even moving, that you might as well stop resisting it.