"Barbra Streisand's star qualities need no iteration and it is not surprising to have her emerge as a superstar in the Technicolor-Panavision milieu of the screen. By now no one even dares set foot in her parade, let alone drizzle thereon...What comes clearer on the big screen than on the stage or television is how good an actress she is...She creates, on screen, a person rather than merely a personality. She is a clown and a tragedienne, a combination of waif and nice-Jewish-girl, of gamine and galumpher; she is that contemporary enigma, the beautiful ugly who defies classic form. She is, in effect, a startling piece of pop art with a glitteringly evident potential for permanence, depending ultimately on her surroundings and her own propensity for development." 

- New York magazine

"[Watching] Funny Girl is like suddenly immersing oneself in warm, melted marshmallow. The much-honored William Wyler has piloted this popular musical from stage to screen, and it has a way of making the calendar flip back some twenty years to the days of Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth, with one notable modernization-Barbra Streisand." 

- Saturday Review

"[Streisand] may have omitted an a from her name, but Barbra leaves nothing out of Funny Girl. Gags, production numbers, vaudeville mugging and tearstained love scenes receive the same manic stress and fervor. As in the Broadway show, when the jokes are good, Barbra displays the best timing East of Mae West. When Jule Styne's numbers are deserving–'People,' 'Don't Rain on My Parade'–she warms them with meticulous emotional phrasing until they glow like a marquee." 

- Time magazine

"When she is singing–in a marvelous scene on roller skates–when she throws a line away, or shrugs, or looks funny or sad, she has a power; gentleness and intensity that rather knocks all the props and sets and camera angles on their ear." 

- The New York Times

"It is not surprising that after almost two seasons on Broadway and a healthy run in London's West End, playing the Fanny Brice role she created, that Barbra Streisand in her Hollywood debut makes such a marked impact. The charismatic ingredients of the smash musical, the star's inspired song stylings, with the deliberately offbeat...casting of Omar Sharif in the Nick Arnstein role, combine into one of the more important roadshow filmusicals."

- Variety

"It is impossible to praise Miss Streisand too highly...She turns out, curiously enough, to be a born movie star. It was her voice that made her famous, and that's fair enough. But it will be her face and her really splendid comic ability that make her a star. She has the best timing since Mae West, and is more fun to watch than anyone since the young Katharine Hepburn. She doesn't actually sing a song at all; she acts it. She does things with her hands and face that are simply individual; that's the only way to describe them. They haven't been done before. She sings, and you're really happy you're there." 

- Roger Ebert

"A bravura performance by Barbra Streisand. As Fanny Brice, she has the wittiest comic inflections since the comediennes of the 30s; she makes written dialogue sound like inspired improvisation. As the shady gambler Nicky Arnstein, phlegmatic Omar Sharif appears to be some sort of visiting royalty, with a pained professional smile to put the common people at their ease. But Streisand's triumphant talent rides right over the film's weaknesses." 

- Pauline Kael

"The film's central irony is not the usual one of public success at the expense of private pain, but the complex one of success at the expense of personal knowledge. Streisand never looks into the mirrors that Wyler surrounds her with. Well worth watching, even if most later Streisand movies aren't."

- Phil Hardy, “TimeOut Film Guide”

"While the 1960s swung, this spirited, good-natured but creakily old-fashioned picture lived in a different zeitgeist. It had the semi- fantasized stage musical sequences of a previous age. It suggested a Jewish identity for Fanny, but not too emphatically. It had smiling, submissive "coloured help". Streisand's attempts at being "funny" are an embarrassing kind of cleaned up Mae West schtick. But songs like "Don't Rain on My Parade" live triumphantly on."

- Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

"Streisand is a great Funny Girl and there's something entertaining in every scene, but I always think of it as a watershed movie, from the time when the definitions of success and talent and getting ahead in show business were changing. Not Streisand - she's a doll with a remarkable voice, especially in the final number which is actually shot live and not to recorded playback. I'm talking about the swift rise of the fictional Fanny Brice seen here, who hopefully was not like the character in the movie." 

- Glenn Erickson, DVD Savant

"Bad as biography, but first rate as musical..."

- “Leonard Maltin's Film & Video Guide”

"Streisand is stunning, but the film is a trial, particularly when the music disappears somewhere around the 90-minute mark and all that's left is leaden melodrama."

- Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

"William Wyler's musical debut is less assured than one would have liked, but no matter...The oddly cast Sharif is better than usual, but Streisand, of course, is most of the show, belting out songs, pulling heartstrings, alternating between raucous slapstick and dramatic power, and generally demonstrating that she has arrived in a big way."

- TV Guide

 

 

Additionally, this film has received the following awards and/or honors:

Funny Girl was nominated for eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actress (Barbra Streisand), Best Supporting Actress (Kay Medford), Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Song ("Funny Girl"), Best Musical Score, and Best Sound. Barbra Streisand won for Best Actress.

The film's editing team of William Sands, Robert Swink and Maury Winetrobe was nominated for an ACE (American Cinema Editors) Eddie Award for Best Edited Feature Film.

Funny Girl was nominated for three BAFTA Awards: Best Actress, Best Cinematography, and Best Costume Design.

William Wyler was nominated for a DGA (Directors Guild of America) Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures.

Funny Girl was nominated for four Golden Globe Awards including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, Best Director,and Best Original Song ("Funny Girl"). Barbra Streisand won for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy.

Isobel Lennart won a WGA (Writers Guild of America) Award for her Funny Girl screenplay. It was for Best Written American Musical.

In 2002, Funny Girl was ranked number 41 on the American Film Institute's list "100 Years...100 Passions" which named the best love stories of all time.

In 2004 the song "People" from Funny Girl was ranked number thirteen on AFI's list of the greatest movie songs "100 Years...100 Songs." The song "Don't Rain on My Parade" was ranked number 46.

In 2005 Barbra Streisand's famous opening line from Funny Girl "Hello, gorgeous" was ranked number eighty-one on AFI's list of the greatest movie quotes "100 Years...100 Movie Quotes."

In 2006 the American Film Institute named Funny Girl the 16th best movie musical of all time.