Most critics are unimpressed: seven of the twelve reviews are negative, three mixed, and only two come down in its favour. Where the praise gathers, it gathers on the animation. Reviewers across the spread admire Tartakovsky’s stretchy, expressive character work, the retro-pop look of the monsters and the sheer speed of the sight gags, and several concede that enough of the jokes land to pass the time.
The complaints are about everything underneath the drawing. The overprotective-father story is called hackneyed, the sentiment treacly, the script muddled, and more than one critic finds the frantic pace exhausting rather than funny; Empire adds the auto-tuned songs to the charge sheet. The scores sit tightly around the low 40s, which makes the dissent stand out: The Wrap calls it a boisterous all-ages treat, and Vulture, writing six years on, finds it a thin but reliably funny diversion. Nobody argues it has much to say about its monsters.