Metacritic reviews

The film would be funnier and more provocative if it took a stronger stand on one side or the other, but Howard chooses to hedge his bets, selecting an ending that celebrates brotherhood more than the strongly hinted- at notion that American workers would do well to get off their featherbedding backs.

Drawn from real life, the conflict between cultures is good for both a laugh and a sober thought along the way.

Gung Ho goes after that ever-so-elusive Capra-esque spirit of communal triumph over adversity, but both sides too often verge on stereotypes for this to pay off as richly as it should.

I think the fault is in the screenplay, which tells a story that can be predicted almost from the opening frames. The people who wrote this movie did not bother, or dare, to give us truly individual Japanese characters; there is only one who is developed with any care.

Howard entices us into overlooking the film's faults with some genuinely amusing scenes, particularly those featuring Japanese-American Gedde Watanabe as a beleaguered Assan executive who doesn't fit the corporate mold. [14 Mar 1986, p.27]

The movie isn't really about America and Japan at all; it's about set-ups for gags. [14 Mar 1986, p.D2]

It's more cheerful than funny, and so insistently ungrudging about Americans and Japanese alike that its satire cuts like a wet sponge.

Its tone swings violently from pratfall to preachment, from an indictment of featherbed laziness to an extended beer-commercial celebration of the mythical American worker.

Howard's fifth movie is a keen disappointment. Clever moments and bittersweet touches aside, it leaves you wishing a modern-day Preston Sturges had written the script. [17 Mar 1986, p.82]