Frank McKlusky, C.I.

Leonard Maltin panned the film as a "bomb", calling it a "crude, clumsy comedy".[11] The Oklahoman wrote, "What might make Frank McKlusky, C.I. worth renting is that it is so horribly bad. I laughed. I laughed quite a bit at jokes that have been done before in much better movies, starring much better casts."[12] TV Guide gave the film 1 out of 4 stars, calling it a "cartoonish farce likely to disappoint even the staunchest fans of bird-brained comedy."[5]

JoBlo.com gave the film 2 out of 10 stars, writing, "I was actually yawning as I tried to figure out how an entire production of people, most of whom had acted in successful films before, could take part in this movie, shoot these extremely lame over-the-top sequences, deliver these horrible lines and perpetuate every stupid, unfunny joke that you've seen rehashed over the past 10 years (fart, gay and handicap jokes abound), and not raise their hand and say, 'Uhhhhm, am I the only one who thinks that none of this is even one damn bit humorous??'"[6] DVD Talk gave the film half a star, writing, "tries to be Jim Carrey and fails miserably - the lowlight being an instance where the character has to fake being a female gymnast and ends up doing a series of what appear to be dance routines. Quaid's character spends most of the film in a coma, so he doesn't have much to do, while Parton seems embarrassed [sic]. [...] Although I thought Sheridan was capable of something decent based upon his prior roles, McKlusky is the kind of film that ruins careers."[13]

Nathan Rabin panned the film, writing, "Who is Dave Sheridan? Well, the quick, easy answer is that he is a poor man’s Jim Carrey. Who is Frank McKlusky? Well, imagine, for a minute, that Ace Ventura was a generic nerd character and instead of being a pet detective be was essentially an insurance detective? If that sounds terrible, it’s because it is. Theater owners, like audiences, were right to give this whole sorry production a hard pass."[7]