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"At least they appropriately named their movie," says Michael Elliott (Movie Parables). "It really is up the proverbial creek with no means to come back down."

Russ Breimeier (Christianity Today Movies) says, "Without a Paddle is amateur and tedious. Some of the lines are flat-out terrible. This isn't funny, it's lazy, and when the good guys start pelting the bad guys with bags of poop—I kid you not—you know that we're dealing with fourth-grade writing here."

Steve Lansingh (Film Forum) says it suffers "from a severe overload of the ridiculous. It wasn't the least bit plausible. It wasn't man vs. nature, it was man vs. desperate screenwriter, throwing half-baked ideas against the screen and seeing what will stick. I stopped caring; whatever danger was coming next was bound to be over the top and yet completely harmless to our heroes. I was just numb."

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) say it's "full of gross-out sight gags, generally of the scatological, stoner and slapstick variety. But, while this film is up the creek without much of a narrative paddle, it does come equipped with a surprisingly moral compass—though for much of the movie's 99 minutes its needle has a hard time finding a truly tasteful North."

Lacy Mical Callahan (Christian Spotlight) writes, "The premise of this movie is simple and good. It could have been both entertaining and fun to play out. Unfortunately, screenwriters Jay Leggett and Mitch Rouse chose to weave together a series of crude jokes; twisted, adolescent pranks; foul language and sexual perversion, with nauseating results."

Eight out of ten mainstream critics also slammed the movie.

Marcus Yoars (Plugged In) says it "could've been a light-hearted comedy about mountain trip mishaps. Instead, it becomes a mishap. And a dangerous one at that. It gets 'lost in the woods' starting with the very first scene, bludgeoning families with profanities and vulgarities, and a barrage of sexual—and homosexual—references."

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