 The film's reputation did not improve with time; Leonard Maltin's 2015 movie guide described it as "vapid" and gave it one and a half stars.Warhol nevertheless praised the film as "the quintessential, most truthful studio-made film about the '60s counterculture".In "The Andy Warhol Diaries", Warhol recounted that Martin Poll had approached him in 1986 about doing a movie on Warhol's life story, to which Warhol responded that "a wonderful movie had already been made on the sixties, and he should just remake it — "The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart.""