I Get Wet provoked very polarizing critical reaction when it was initially released, with Pitchforks Ian Cohen retrospectively writing that "critics of Andrew W.K. were often branded as the fun police and his fans considered fools or incurable ironists." On the review aggregate site Metacritic, the album holds a score of 64 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Stephen Thompson of The A.V. Club described I Get Wet as "more fabulously entertaining the louder it's played" and added that "if it wipes out a generation of hard-rock crybabies along the way, fans will owe him a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid." Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone also gave the album a positive review, stating that "there's no denying the over-the-top whomp of his music, the loudest and funniest metal you've heard in ages." David Browne, writing in Entertainment Weekly, noted that W.K. "must know how ridiculous this all sounds, but he attacks the material with such fervor that you almost believe he means every word." AllMusic's Heather Phares noted that while the album "has a certain sameness due to the frenetic beat that drives nearly every track, it's the perfect complement to W.K.'s party-centric vision", praising it as "refreshingly simple and cleverly stupid."
