 John Simon of "New York" magazine, however, lamented the musical's "big lie" of portraying the illness of AIDS to look "gentle, elegant–something like a nineteenth-century heroine's wistful expiring of consumption–where we all know that it is grueling and gruesome".Clive Barnes of the "New York Post" wrote that the musical "clatters like a set of false teeth in a politically correct ventriloquist's dummy".Douglas Watt of the "New York Daily News" described the musical as "too sweet and sugary by far" and its plot as "sticky with sentiment", comparing the tone of "Falsettos" to that of a soap opera.