Hal Ashby has the deftness to keep us conscious of the whirring pleasures of the carnal-farce structure and yet to give it free play. This was the most virtuoso example of sophisticated, kaleidoscopic face that American moviemakers had yet come up with; frivolous and funny, it carries a sense of heedless activity, of a craze of dissatisfaction.
Shampoo achieves a fine comic distance by setting itself so specifically in the past, but it doesn't - to its credit - try to get you, in the present, off the hook. [10 Feb 1975, p.51]
All the excellent creative components do not add up to a whole. There are, however, strong elements in the film. Warden’s performance is outstanding. He makes the most of a script and direction which gives his character much more dimension than the prototype cuckold.
In Shampoo Ashby shows that he has a good memory for a couple of decades of cinematic clichés. He gives us an unnecessary motor race and some obligatory slow motion, but he misses most of the opportunities offered him.