[The trouble with Sweet Charity is that its star, Shirley MacLaine, is] required to dance—and in Bob Fosse country at that….

[Choreographically] speaking the most exhilarating moments in the film are two numbers—'Hey, Big Spender' and the trio of eccentricities that make up 'Rich Man's Frug'—in which the star does not appear. Here, with his characteristically tight, neurotically precise and almost off-balance steps, where the dancers hug close together as though afraid to break the magic circuit, Bob Fosse is Bob Fosse as he is nowhere else in the film.

For, doubling as director, he pulls constantly against himself, undermining his own meticulous algebraics by inserting choppy efforts at mise en scène instead of choreographing his way out of difficulties…. Subsequently the direction settles down to become much less queasy, but there is still a plethora of irritatingly unnecessary dissolves, zooms, frozen shots and...