The film has a 94% approval rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 16 reviews with an average rating of 7.2/10. Contemporary critical reaction was, for the most part, cautiously favorable. "Variety" said it "drags" but thought it had "perverse interest." "Time" described it as a "humane, moving picture." "The Los Angeles Times" praised it as "unquestionably a milestone" but refused to run its ads. Among the major critics, Pauline Kael, who disliked Friedkin, was alone in finding absolutely nothing redeeming about it. Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" observed, "Except for an inevitable monotony that comes from the use of so many close-ups in a confined space, Friedkin's direction is clean and direct, and, under the circumstances, effective. All of the performances are good, and that of Leonard Frey, as Harold, is much better than good. He's excellent without disturbing the ensemble... Crowley has a good, minor talent for comedy-of-insult, and for creating enough interest, by way of small character revelations, to maintain minimum suspense. There is something basically unpleasant, however, about a play that seems to have been created in an inspiration of love-hate and that finally does nothing more than exploit its (I assume) sincerely conceived stereotypes." In a "San Francisco Chronicle" review of a 1999 revival of the film, Edward Guthmann recalled, "By the time "Boys" was released in 1970 ... it had already earned among gays the stain of Uncle Tomism." He called it "a genuine period piece but one that still has the power to sting. In one sense it's aged surprisingly little — the language and physical gestures of camp are largely the same — but in the attitudes of its characters, and their self-lacerating vision of themselves, it belongs to another time. And that's a good thing." Bill Weber from "Slant Magazine" wrote in 2015: "The partygoers are caught in the tragedy of the pre-liberation closet, a more crippling and unforgiving one than the closets that remain." The film was perceived in different ways throughout the gay community. There were those who agreed with most critics and believed "The Boys" was making great strides while others thought it portrayed a group of gay men wallowing in self-pity. There were even those who felt discouraged by some of the honesty in the production.