Critical Reception
The film has received generally positive reviews from film critics; review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports a "Certified Fresh" rating of 78% (based on 100 critical reviews). Among Rotten Tomatoes' "Top Critics", which consists of popular and notable critics from the top newspapers, websites, television and radio programs, the film holds an overall approval rating of 70%, based on an average of 27 reviews. The site's general consensus was a tongue-in-cheek statement, "The best movie to star both the King and JFK." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted score out of 1–100 reviews from film critics, has a rating of 56 based on 29 reviews.
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film three out of four stars saying, "This absurdly clever caper is elevated by Bruce Campbell's pensive Elvis into a moving meditation on the diminutions of age and the vagaries of fame." Todd McCarthy of Variety gave a negative review stating, " introduction of the mummy plot basically derails the film at about the 45-minute point, and the silly climax...is so rote and generic that it could have come out of any ordinary horror film.", although McCarthy does admit, "Campbell's Elvis stands as one of the very best screen interpretations of the King seen thus far, even if he's arguably not even playing the real thing."
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars and highlighted the film's "delightful wackiness" and stating, "It has the damnedest ingratiating way of making us sit there and grin at its harebrained audacity, laugh at its outhouse humor, and be somewhat moved (not deeply, but somewhat) at the poignancy of these two old men and their situation."
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