"In 1933, Hoopla was received badly by both press and public, and coming on top of Clara Bow's equally unsuccessful (but equally entertaining, today) Call Her Savage, and sandwiched in between a couple of nervous breakdowns, it spelled a total finis to her career. Today it's hard to see why, apart from the fact that Clara then seemed a mild anachronism, still rooted in the twenties, playing straight the roles that Mae West was kidding. Too, sleazy carnival stories were fairly commonplace and lacking in novelty. But it's still a good, solid, well-mounted film, peppered with good performances and dialogue and dominated by Clara. She acts well and looks great. Certainly there's nothing here to suggest a fading talent; quite the contrary, it's sad and ironic that the final shot in the film-a shimmering full-screen closeup of a radiantly happy Clara who has just achieved, in the plot, both marital happiness and stardom-should be her last film scene ever. But at that, it's a great shot to go out on! With its menage-à-trois climax, the film is morally a little odd in its solution, but no more so than many other pre-Production Code movies." William K. Everson