Roger Ebert gave the film 1.5 stars out of a possible 4. The cast was "interesting", he wrote, but the main failing of "Caveman" was it being a spoof with "no popular original material for it to satirize. There has never been a really successful movie set in prehistoric times." Ebert and Gene Siskel both gave the film a negative "don't see it" review on their TV show but softened their criticism somewhat by noting that its dinosaur-related sequences were hilarious.