The reviews lean mixed to negative, and the one point on which nearly everyone agrees is that the animals carry the film. Critics praise the animatronic creatures and the set pieces that put Murphy in among them, and several single out the voice work, Norm Macdonald’s dog Lucky in particular. Murphy himself gets credit for playing it straight and letting the menagerie take the laughs, a restraint that even the harsher notices acknowledge.
The complaints cluster on everything around the animals: a thin story, jokes pitched low and often scatological, and comedy that more than one critic finds slapdash or stuck at sitcom level. Total Film, broadly entertained, still says the final third drags. The spread is wide, from a sunny recommendation at The New York Times, the only clearly positive notice, down to Empire and Eye for Film, which find it bland and unoriginal and regret the wasted talent, Ossie Davis among it.