Premierno je bil prikazan 14. februarja 1963 in naletel na dobre ocene kritikov. Na 36. podelitvi je osvojil oskarja za najboljši tujejezični film in kostumografijo, nominiran pa je bil še za režijo, izvirni scenarij in scenografijo.[3] Prejel je tudi glavno nagrado za najboljši film na Mednarodnem filmskem festivalu v Moskvi. Velja za avantgardni film[4] in zelo vplivno klasiko.[5] Revija Sight & Sound ga je leta 2012 uvrstila na deseto mesto lestvice stotih najboljših filmov vseh časov, Britanski filmski inštitut pa ga je v anketi filmskih režiserjev leta 2002 uvrstil na tretje mesto.[6]Vatikan ga je ob stoletnici filma uvrstil na seznam 45 najboljših filmov do leta 1995.[7]
↑Alberto Arbasino (1963), review of 8+1⁄2 in Il Giorno, 6 March 1963: "The film is a step forward in the history of novelistic form. The block structure of La Dolce Vita already paved the way in both cinema and literature. Otto et mezzo, however, not only outdistances by many years almost all films currently made but impacts our narrative at the most sensitive moment of the friction between convention and avant-garde, and may well provide a boost in the direction of the experimental, i.e. the future, as regards, among other things, the problems of being, of writing, and the relationship with reality."
↑Film scholar Charles Affron writes that "the status of 8+1⁄2 as a 'classic' text can be recognized in the homage of its imitations and versions." Cf. Affron, 5. Fellini scholar Peter Bondanella concurs: "As might be expected from the work's important place in the history of the cinema, the criticism on 8+1⁄2 is voluminous." Cf. Bondanella, The Cinema of Federico Fellini, 163
