The single received positive reviews from music critics who labelled it a successful breakup song and as one of the best tracks on Tragic Kingdom.

[1] The album was the band's first record with minimal contributions from Gwen's brother, Eric Stefani, who had left the group due to creative differences earlier in 1995.

Club felt that this encouraged the members of No Doubt to incorporate the influences that helped popularize the band; Partridge later stated that this allowed Tragic Kingdom songs like "You Can Do It", "Hey You!

[5] According to the liner notes for No Doubt's 2003 greatest hits album, The Singles 1992–2003, the debate over which version of "Excuse Me Mr." would be featured on Tragic Kingdom became a debacle.

[11][12][13] Partridge described the track as a rock-influenced song that pays homage to the music which helped form the band.

[4] Diffuser.fm's Brendan Manley noted the track's "Dixieland brass breakdown" during the bridge and cited "Excuse Me Mr." as an example of the one of many different styles of songs on Tragic Kingdom.

[14] David Browne discussed in his Entertainment Weekly review of the album that the track is able to combine various genres within a duration of three minutes.

[15] According to Musicnotes.com, "Excuse Me Mr." is set in common time, with a double time-like feel and has a very fast tempo of 146 beats per minute.

[16] The key of the song is set in F major, with Gwen Stefani's vocal range spanning nearly an octave and a half, from A3 to F5 in scientific pitch notation.

Partridge felt that the point in the song where it switches to circus music helps secure the idea that love is absurd.

[18] Loren Diblasi from MTV News noted that the lyrics of "Excuse Me Mr." suggest that No Doubt was detailing a painful breakup; Stefani sings during the middle eight, "It's almost as if I'm tied to the tracks / And I'm waiting for him to rescue me / The funny thing is, he's not going to come".

[15] Seija Rankin speculated that the subject of the song was Kanal, who Stefani had broken up with prior to writing the material for the album.

[21] Marah Eakin described "Excuse Me Mr." as a "banger" that "aged well" despite being released over 20 years ago; she also selected the track as one of the album's singles that sounds "fucking good".

Before the song's second verse begins, Stefani ties herself to rail tracks in front of an oncoming train with the hopes that nearby people Dumont, Kanal, or Young will come to her rescue.

[37] For No Doubt's 2002 Rock Steady Tour, the song was performed during the concert's middle segment, in between them singing "In My Head" and "Different People".

According to Rolling Stone's Christopher R. Weingarten, the song had a "radical makeover" as it was "slowed down and skanked [sic] up until it sounded like the English Beat".

[39] At the first Rock in Rio USA music festival in 2015, No Doubt headlined the main stage during the beginning day of the event.