A Certain Young Man opened to reviews that were lukewarm at best, and was a financial failure at the box office. Some screenings were preceded by the Technicolor short The Czarina's Secret featuring Sally Rand and Olga Baclanova. The film's release followed on the heels of A Gentleman of Paris with Adolph Menjou, which was based on the same source material and was considered a better adaptation. Novarro's performance was unfavorably compared with that of Menjou by several critics,Soares, André; Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro; St. Martin's Press, New York, 2002; p. 132-133 including Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times, who found the overall film "only mildly amusing and very shallow," though he found Myers "charming" and work by supporting actors Huntley Gordon and Bert Roach "favorable."
