a family-friendly comedy involving an airlifted elephant, and Operation Dumbo Drop lands with a thud." On Metacritic the film has a score of 48% based on reviews from 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale. Hal Hinson, writing in The Washington Post said, the film is "so peculiar that one barely knows where to start." He noted that "the real audience for the film—the kids—will have not the slightest hint of all this. They'll be far too consumed—as well they should be—with the goofy antics of Bo-Tat, who, as movie elephants go, is actually pretty wonderful." In mixed fashion, he concluded by saying, "Operation Dumbo Drop isn't a shoddy piece of work or a cynical one. It's well acted, well directed and far more interesting visually than most children's films. In its heart of hearts, though, it is more than slightly schizoid. On the one hand, it's a diverting entertainment for children and young adults; on the other, it's a ludicrous fantasy about a war whose complexities cannot be contained by facile metaphors." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times offered a mostly negative review commenting, "the story is so sentimentalized, so sanitized into a family comedy, that I do doubt the reality was anything like this." He expressed disappointment by saying, "There is a moment when Nguyen can shoot the elephant, but chooses not to, using dialogue that I somehow doubt was uttered by any member of the Viet Cong at any time: 'I did not join this army to shoot elephants - especially ones that fly.' " He concluded "As a family movie, "Operation Dumbo Drop" is sort of entertaining. As history, it's shameless." In the Deseret News, critic Chris Hicks reserved a mild compliment for some of the lead acting and directing saying, "Glover and Liotta play against each other pretty well, though there is none of the chemistry Glover has with Mel Gibson in the "Lethal Weapon" films." He noted how director Wincer "moves things along quite well, and there is some impressive stunt work". But overall, he felt the film's screenplay was "strictly by-the-numbers stuff and contains some wildly implausible elements." Janet Maslin, writing in The New York Times, felt the film was at its most, "pleasantly innocuous when it doesn't strain itself with that kind of moralizing