We introduce a method for the determination of the optical retardation, its wavelength dispersion, the cell twist angle, and the orientation of the input director in a reflective liquid crystal (LC) cell. These parameters are found from the extremes of a characteristic function defined as a sum of two spectral reflectivities of the LC cell placed between a pair of linear polarizers. The reflectivities are measured for two cell orientations, one of which is arbitrary and the other one is turned through 45°. Both theoretical analysis and experimental procedures are presented. Excellent agreement between the experiment and our theory has been found. The proposed method can be applied to the measurement of reflective LC cells with small and large cell gaps, as well as cells with small and large twist angles.