Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
For an ostensibly soul-deep movie like this to work, we need more than smirks and scowls.

Name : Linda Holmes / Alias : NPR
It's fun to watch Chris Rock; it's just fun. And there are parts of this film where it's fun to watch him in exactly the ways he wants it to be.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
It's a slap-happy movie and often scurrilously funny - the sound of a gifted comic mind finally finding its onscreen voice.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Rock's ambitious passion project - he wrote, directed and stars in it - is a bawdy, uninhibited yet thoughtful social satire about fame vs. artistic fulfillment.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
Top Five is a reminder that as often as comedy fails us, sometimes it's our best hope for resuscitation. Seeing it at the end of a crap week, I suddenly felt I could breathe again.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
An innovative take on familiar material, Top Five is an exquisitely paced, rich, idiosyncratic, satirical, yet deeply moving free-form comedy about a Hollywood star who is shadowed for one day by a New York Times reporter.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Rock has said that he wanted to make a movie that captures the energy of his stand-up. Top Five fits the bill.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"Top Five" has the bright, high-gloss feel of the most delicious wish-fulfillment fantasies, but it derives its spiky, propulsive energy from the adamantly forthright figure at its center.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
The sweetest surprise in this raunchy comic ride is how artfully Rock lets down his guard. His confident, prowling wit as a stand-up has finally found its way to the screen, enhanced by a bracing vulnerability.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
[Rock is] still not all the way there in "Top Five," his third effort as writer-director-star. But the movie has so many laughs it hardly matters.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Rock is on a roll again.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Just when it seemed like Chris Rock had already done plenty for the culture, along comes his latest work as a writer and director, "Top Five." And it's one of the most vibrant, sly romantic comedies this year.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
A disorganized, dawdling mess of a movie that is rarely anything less than charming.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Welcome back, Chris Rock.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The mess never coheres, but it sends off you on a high anyway.

Name : David Haglund / Alias : Slate
Extremely enjoyable .

Name : Anna Silman / Alias : Salon.com
Rock still hasn't figured out exactly what he wants you to think of him, but the way the film reflects that uncertainty may be the most interesting thing about it.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
In "Top Five," you sense Rock trying to load all these disparate talents onto a conventional romantic-comedy structure. It's a close call, but it holds.

Name : Chris Vognar / Alias : Dallas Morning News
The movie marks the first time Rock's stand-up persona - cutting, vulnerable, afraid of no sacred cows - has survived intact on the way to the multiplex. That alone is reason for fans to celebrate.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
With "Top Five," Rock has finally made the transition to true movie stardom.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Top Five finds Rock in an elevated form, at 49. Things change, sometimes for the better.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
What lingers hours later aren't just the laughs but the people.

Name : Lisa Kennedy / Alias : Denver Post
Like Rock's best stand-up shows, Top Five mixes the sweet with the salty, the naughty with the remarkably kind. It celebrates the darkly hilarious with the light of whip-smart observations.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
It can be delightful, intelligent, crude, clumsy and culturally tone-deaf, depending on which scene is rolling by. One minute it's a major letdown, the next minute a joy to watch.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
It can be hard for a movie to dwell on the problems of the rich and famous without seeming a touch self-serving, but Rock always keeps things in perspective.

Name : Jordan Mintzer / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The writing is strong enough that when the humor gives way to drama in the second half, there's enough at stake to keep us interested, although Rock still has plenty of jokes in store for the finale.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
To the writing, Rock brings the discipline of his stand-up. Even with some improvisation, there is not one throwaway line in this fat-free script.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
"Top Five" is a funny movie, but Rock has his sights set higher than lowbrow, and for the most part, he succeeds.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Top Five is Rock's most accomplished work yet, a truly personal story whose comedic riffs on love, race, sex, and celebrity are carefully woven into a credible romantic plot.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
Chris Rock wrote, directed, and stars in this genial, splendidly constructed, occasionally hilarious comic drama with a reflexive twist.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
You come away from it with the thrilling sensation that you're seeing an artist you thought you knew reinvent himself.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
A romantic comedy that's also an extended riff on art, identity, authenticity and what it means to be a black entertainer .

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Mr. Rock has made a pyrotechnic pinwheel of a personal comedy, and he's had the wisdom to share it with a strong co-star. While he sends sparks flying every which way, Rosario Dawson keeps the story grounded in calm intelligence and classic romance.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
"Top Five" may be Chris Rock's biggest and boldest film as a director and writer, but a sharper, smarter, realer script would have made it far more than just a lazy, lightweight laughfest.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Richard Roeper.com
A seriously funny, semi-autobiographical film that might be the most accomplished work Chris Rock has ever done for the big screen.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out New York
On the surface, a lost-artist comedy in the vein of Woody Allen's Stardust Memories, but more deeply, a referendum on the dead-end choices Rock himself might be feeling.

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
You'll likely leave the theater smiling. And when's the last time you cold say that about a Chris Rock movie?

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
The movie, which alternates between hilariously vulgar gags and some electric improvs and riffs by Rock and his cast of all-stars, has the crackle and pop of a live performance - it energizes you.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Raunchy in extremis, often funny and at times touching, "Top Five" is Chris Rock's sincere attempt to craft a film career largely detached from his stand-up clowning.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Rock's fast-talking rhythms are all over this movie, and they lift it up; it's like dropping in on a party full of funny people, and leaving before the evening fades.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
As an actor, Rock doesn't create much of a spark with Dawson, and as a director, he tends to let scenes go on too long.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Even for those who don't regard the notion of perfect objectivity with the wariness it deserves, there are compensatory insights in this movie's unapologetic fascination with its subject.

Name : Justin Lowe / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Rather than a conventional inquiry into the circumstances and personalities that contributed to Albert's deception, Feuerzeig allows her to tell her own story, eschewing most other sources involved in her professional debut.

Name : Dennis Harvey / Alias : Variety
In dire need of additional voices that might substantiate Albert's account, and rendered suspect by their conspicuous absence.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Never is Albert confronted with the ramifications of her falsely hijacking a fatal disease, a sexual identity or a social strata that was alien to her.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
Fascinating but frustratingly murky .

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Feuerzeig lets us put together the puzzle pieces of Albert's story. The film's final five minutes - a punch to the heart - make it all clear.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
By turns fascinating and unseemly.

Name : Leah Pickett / Alias : Chicago Reader
This documentary is well crafted but suffers from a deeply unsympathetic protagonist.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
A wild trip with a highly unreliable narrator.

Name : Oliver Jones / Alias : New York Observer
The film effectively explores nature of identity, celebrity, and the creative process in a way that is satisfying, even if many of the questions it raises don't go entirely answered.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
While Feuerzeig makes good visual and narrative use of the world's adulation and outrage over LeRoy and his eventual outing, all those fireworks are exploded solely to illuminate [the real subject, Laura] Albert.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
A fascinating peek into one of the wildest literary scandals in recent years and the bizarre nature of celebrity relationships.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
Feuerzeig's flashy narrative antics reduce a serious and substantial story to mere snippets of information.

Name : Melissa Anderson / Alias : Village Voice
Queasily absorbing .

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Even when the film fails to ask so many of the questions its narrative begs, Author is still a tricky, fascinating look at the strange nexus of art, artifice, and the intoxicating cult of celebrity.

Name : Godfrey Cheshire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
One of most the sharply crafted and enthralling documentaries in recent memory.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Do the widely-praised writings of LeRoy become less praiseworthy when you know they were crafted under false pretenses? It's a question worth chewing on even if the film asking it stacks the deck.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
There is such a thing as a passionate, headlong phony, and you'll meet her in Author: The JT LeRoy Story.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Working in the film's favor is that the JT saga remains relevant today, in this age of Internet alter egos, blurred-reality shows and our continued obsession with fame and celebrity.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Sharply filmed, "Author" explores the appeal of even the most contrived myths, reminding us that even when Pinocchio hides his lengthening nose, he's telling lies.