Among the reactions from critics, Roger Ebert's 1.5-star review was particularly harsh: "Walt Disney's 'The Last Flight of Noah's Ark' is a dreadful movie, bankrupt of creative imagination—an Identi-kit film, assembled from familiar pieces but with no identity of its own. It's so depressingly predictable that in the last half hour we're sitting there thinking: Let's see…the raft has put out to sea, so there has to be at least one shark attack and one bad storm before they're rescued. There are." Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" called it "a so-so Disney picture" that was "dull, but inoffensive, except during its infrequent musical interludes." Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film 1 star out of four and wrote, "The inescapable conclusion to be drawn from watching the latest Disney comic adventure film, 'The Last Flight of Noah's Ark,' is that Walt Disney productions had no conception of whom they were making this film for. It's a very bad film that falls in the gap between a kiddie show and adult entertainment." "Variety" derisively wrote that the film teaches "fundamental values, mainly that every human being should be willing to risk their life for an animal, or even a chicken if the chance arises", and "stresses a subsidiary hint for the little ones: If you don't get your way, whine and cry a lot and maybe the old folks will give in." Charles Champlin of the "Los Angeles Times" was generally positive, declaring that the film "is in most ways the smooth and satisfying family film out of the Disney past, with cute kids (who are at least as smart as the grown-ups) and a dazzling gimmick at the center of the story." Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" wrote, "A low-octane adventure fable, 'Last Flight' keeps sputtering out on the stodgy, overprotective mechanics typical of Disney juvenile entertainment."