Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, it has an approval rating of 31%, based on reviews from 29 critics, with an average score of 4.7/10. The critical consensus reads: "Fluffy and incorrigible, Beethoven is a good boy who deserves a better movie." Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave Beethoven a grade of A.
The Washington Post's Rita Kempley praised the film as a "a waggish tale of canine chicanery, an uproarious if impawsible symphony of drool, doggy fidelity and chewed shoes." Johanna Steinmetz of the Chicago Tribune wrote that "Beethoven charms its way through [its] highly formulaic premise with the help of some smart animal-handling, a few excellently realized visual stunts and narrative montages of life a la dog." The Hartford Courant said: "The most important work comes from a hulking, brown-eyed, sad-faced big star named Chris, who makes Beethoven into a Benji for the '90s, a sort of canine Wallace Beery or Walter Matthau. Roll on, Beethoven."
In The New York Times, Caryn James wrote Beethoven is "much more enjoyable than it has any right to be" and "tugs all the right strings, in a manner strangely reminiscent of Home Alone. It is savvy about kids' troubles...[and] is sentimental but not gooey. Most important, its cartoonish bad guys offer villainy without any true danger and are vanquished by a non-adult hero". James's colleague Janet Maslin also gave a positive review, opining that while the film is "no classic...it's a sunny, energetic children's film with a good notion of what young audiences like."
James added Charles Grodin "provides much of the adult appeal of Beethoven. He underplays his comic scenes where another actor would have been mugging furiously, but he still lets on that George is a softy underneath it all." In the Los Angeles Times, Michael Wilmington said: "The movie is about the way pets humanize uptight suburbanites. And the suburbanite here, Charles Grodin as George Newton, is a good part of what makes Beethoven work. Grodin's mastery of uptight types is always apparent." He concluded that "despite [Beethoven's] crudities, overstatement and predictable plot...there's something a little goofy and sweet about it".
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, writing in his review that "this is not the sort of entertainment I scour the movie pages for, hoping desperately for a new film about a cute dog. Nor did I find anything particularly new in Beethoven, although I concede that the filmmakers secured an admirable dog for the title role, and that Charles Grodin, who is almost always amusing, has what fun can be had playing the grumpy dad." He concluded Beethoven is "the kind of clever, innocuous family entertainment that's always in short supply."
Negative reviews criticized the film's plot, with some expressing it recycles cliches from other dog films like Turner & Hooch. Others pointed out the film's darker elements may be too scary for young kids. Chris Hicks of the Deseret News wrote that "the first half brings to mind the best elements of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, with its delightful portrayal of domestic bliss gone awry. But the second half is more like a failed kiddie version of a TV crime drama. And the film never quite recovers." Hal Lipper of the Tampa Bay Times called the film an "87-minute commercial" for pet food company Iams, but praised Bonnie Hunt's performance.
The plot line of Alice leaving the workforce after an alarming experience with a babysitter was criticized in multiple reviews because of its perceived bias against working mothers. In The Boston Globe, Betsy Sherman wrote the film had "a strange tone of desperateness in its depiction of a 'perfect' suburban nuclear family. An assortment of grotesque supporting characters become threats to the family, and are dispatched by Beethoven." The American Veterinary Medical Association expressed disapproval for the film's evil veterinarian plot and sent letters of protest to Ivan Reitman, the film's executive producer, and to the Motion Picture Association of America.
