Top Five
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: December 12, 2014 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
81
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
35
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 11, 2014
In setting Andre on his search for self, Mr. Rock has carved out a third way, in the process creating a black character who’s fully human and a comedy that’s wholly a blast. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyDec 11, 2014
Top Five is fully loaded. The laughs are earned, the intelligence never disappears, all the performers shine. But Rock is the diamond — raw, rough and rare. Read full review
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallDec 10, 2014
Top Five is the funniest movie I've seen this year, and the calendar's running out. No matter whose movie Rock's resembles, it is completely his, and a brash start to being taken seriously as an artist. Read full review
100
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekDec 9, 2014
Chris Rock couldn't have planned it this way, but his exuberant and wondrous comedy Top Five, opening at just the right time, is like an airdrop of candy over the city, if not the country. Read full review
100
HitfixDrew McWeenySep 15, 2014
Top Five is, above everything else, really entertaining. It is a successful sophisticated spin on Hollywood formula, and it feels like Chris Rock finally finding a filmmaking voice that is just as limber and funny and sharply satirical and angry and even romantic as Rock's stand-up. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerSep 15, 2014
It’s like watching a first-rate standup routine transformed into fiction, or in this case auto-fiction, as Rock has more on his mind than just making us laugh, offering up a witty celebrity satire that doubles as a love story set during one long and eventful New York City day. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyDec 10, 2014
As brilliantly funny as Chris Rock is, he's never been able to replicate the high-voltage danger and electricity of his stand-up act on the big screen. But in his latest film, the sharply satirical Top Five, he not only makes a case for why he should be a bona fide movie star, he also proves he's a writer-director to be reckoned with. Read full review
91
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthSep 15, 2014
It avoids the trap of simply being a celebrity vehicle about celebrity, by displaying a surprising heart beneath its very funny surface. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 11, 2014
The film feels freshly minted because the man who made it has such a lively mind and fearless style. At a time when all too many movies are selling bleakness and dysfunction, it also feels like a revenant from Hollywood’s golden age, when an entertainment’s highest function was to entertain. Read full review
90
VarietyScott FoundasSep 15, 2014
Rock is enormously appealing here, balancing his patented comic abrasiveness with a real tenderness, the faint bewilderment of an ordinary man blindsided by his own success. And Dawson makes an excellent foil. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerTirdad DerakhshaniDec 12, 2014
A truly refreshing break from the Hollywood humdrum, the film is a perfect vehicle for Rock's range of talents, giving him plenty of breathing space to launch into his trademark stand-up riffs while grounding him in a story as moving as it is funny. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonDec 11, 2014
With Top Five, Rock has finally made the transition to true movie stardom. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 11, 2014
Top Five is Rock's best movie by a mile. It's authentically hilarious. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 11, 2014
This is a smart, savvy film with sabre-sharp one-liners, a half-dozen terrific supporting turns, one of the best scores of the year, a winning romance and a heartfelt and authentic performance from Rock. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnSep 15, 2014
Rock's savage wit comes through in the wry screenplay, which is loaded with topicality as it pokes fun at subjects ranging from Tyler Perry movies to Angry Birds. Read full review
80
Total FilmJames MottramMay 5, 2015
Funny, foul-mouthed and frighteningly on-the-money, Top Five is relentlessly amusing even while it’s super-indulgent and selfabsorbed. Rock on. Read full review
80
EmpireSimon CrookMay 5, 2015
A merrily ferocious pop at the Hollywood bubble that balances sharp, acid laughs with a sweet, believable meet-cute. Top of the pack and Chris Rock’s best movie. Read full review
80
SlateDavid HaglundDec 15, 2014
Top Five is not an op-ed. The movie probably makes its loudest statement about race simply by existing: an ambitious and personal film full of black stars, backed in part by black producers, written, directed by, and starring a hugely popular black artist. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 11, 2014
Top Five is a funny movie, but Rock has his sights set higher than lowbrow, and for the most part, he succeeds. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfDec 10, 2014
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. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierDec 10, 2014
It’s one of the most vibrant, sly romantic comedies this year. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenDec 10, 2014
Everywhere in America these days, people pay lip service to the idea of conducting open and honest conversations about race. Due to a fluke of timing and its entertaining quality, Top Five should help get the ball rolling. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianStephen WhittyDec 12, 2014
Rock – who also wrote and directed – is very good as Andre, and the filmmaking is fine. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comSusan WloszczynaDec 12, 2014
Most filmmakers barely know how to capitalize on Dawson’s talents other than to fill up the screen with her goddess-like beauty. But Rock treats her single mom who boasts a checkered romantic past along with strong opinions as an equal sparring partner. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Brad WheelerDec 11, 2014
Top Five finds Rock in an elevated form, at 49. Things change, sometimes for the better. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 11, 2014
If there’s a surprise to Top Five, it’s the emotional undercurrent that Rock writes and Dawson brings out. What lingers hours later aren’t just the laughs but the people. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 11, 2014
It’s a slap-happy movie and often scurrilously funny — the sound of a gifted comic mind finally finding its onscreen voice. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 11, 2014
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. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 11, 2014
The result is raunchy, energetic, sharp-eyed and a bit rambling. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 11, 2014
Admittedly, Top Five suffers from its share of too-convenient contrivances and clunky passages... But Top Five is also buoyantly self- sustaining, thanks in part to Rock and Dawson’s easy, convincingly seductive chemistry and some genuinely hilarious surprises. Read full review
70
The DissolveNathan RabinDec 11, 2014
It’s a big leap forward for Rock as both an actor and a filmmaker, written and directed with the nervous, live-wire energy that has eluded his on-screen work for so long. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyDec 10, 2014
A disorganized, dawdling mess of a movie that is rarely anything less than charming. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezDec 11, 2014
The first half of the movie, which alternates between hilariously vulgar, gross 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. Read full review
63
New York PostKyle SmithDec 10, 2014
If Top Five doesn’t go deep, though, it is intermittently very funny. Read full review
63
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreDec 10, 2014
Rock is more a genial presence here than an actor playing an addict tested by a bad day. He never lets us see the strain that could make him fall off the wagon. He scores laughs, but generously leaves the outrageous stuff to his legion of supporting players. Read full review
58
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 12, 2014
For an ostensibly soul-deep movie like this to work, we need more than smirks and scowls. Read full review
50
TheWrapJames RocchiDec 11, 2014
Top Five is that movie precisely so good and yet still so flawed that you can watch greatness slip out of its ambitious but awkward reach right in front of your eyes. Read full review
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