Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
A surprisingly moving tale of friendship and family, dressed up as an adorably frivolous sci-fi comedy.

Name : Maricar Estrella / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Tim Johnson ( Antz) has capitalized on DreamWorks' proprietary animation platform, Apollo to create a rich, intricate setting.But the technology doesn't save the film from falling flat on other levels.

Name : Nancy Churnin / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Maybe it's because kids sometimes feel like aliens in a grown-up world, but from E.T. and Elliott to Lilo and Stitch, pairing a child with a creature from outer space can prove to be a winning combination.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Tension is one of "Home's" biggest issues. There just isn't nearly enough of it. Story is another. Even a kids' movie needs more complexity and more invention.

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
Lazy gags, and it's been done better elsewhere.

Name : Dana Rose Falcone / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The combination of Home's layered message, fun score, and clever comedy make it a colorful choice for moviegoers of any age.

Name : Geoff Pevere / Alias : Globe and Mail
A big, fat happy meal of a movie .

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
From a creative standpoint, this is the studio's least exciting feature yet - hardly its worst, execution-wise, but entirely lacking in the risk-taking spirit that has spawned such successful franchises as "Shrek," "Kung Fu Panda" and "Dragon."

Name : Michael Rechtshaffen / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
There may be no place like home, but there are a lot of places like Home, an animated adventure about the unlikely friendship between a lonely girl and an alien misfit that can't help but feel familiar.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
DreamWorks movies are often about outsiders learning that they don't have to fit in, a lesson the filmmakers may not have absorbed themselves.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
An earnest exercise that falls flat, despite the best of intentions.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
The Gummi-colored animation is imaginative, but director Tim Johnson's ho-hum 3D cartoon remains strictly 1D.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
As animated sci-fi for small fry, it's a success whose modest but well-executed ambitions are no small part of its charm.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : ChristyLemire.com
Heartwarming and harmless? Sure, why not. But it's also numbing in its simplicity and often rather annoying.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
Inoffensive but flavourless, and crammed with familiar elements from better movies like Lilo and Stitch , Toy Story and Despicable Me .

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
Director Tim Johnson ("Over the Hedge") and his animators can't maintain this level of freshness throughout, but that's where Parsons and his goofy charm take over.

Name : Neil Genzlinger / Alias : New York Times
A charming concoction with positive messages for younger children about conquering fears, understanding outsiders and knowing yourself.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
The film moves quickly and keeps the jokes coming, which only means that "Home" would rather keep young viewers occupied than give them something to think about.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
The bland "Home" is a crash pad at best.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Anyone over 10 will see the plot twists a mile away. Kids will probably enjoy the goofy Boovs, the rainbows of colors and the music. Call me a traditionalist, but I still say the world was a better place before those darn Boovs invaded.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
Aggressive and cynical approach to children's entertainment, pummeling viewers with mechanical-looking action sequences (which suggest video game demos), unfunny one-liners, and overly loud pop songs and sound effects.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
I brought a couple of my kids, who liked it fine and found the friendship at the center rather affecting.

Name : Sandie Angulo Chen / Alias : Washington Post
This kiddie sci-fi adaptation doesn't quite live up to its evocative title.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Like the timorous Boov, "Home" has little interest in risk-taking.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
It works moderately well thanks largely to the voice talents of Jim Parsons and, to a lesser extent, Steve Martin. Two droll dudes who put a fair share of funny into this animated picture.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
Aside from Parsons' initially amusingly mangled Yoda-like English, which gets a tad repetitive, Home doesn't stand out as fresh or particularly funny.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Key characters are admirably diverse, but the fast-paced tale is thoroughly predictable.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
When we scratch beneath the sugary surface, there's something tart inside that's difficult to digest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : David Haglund / Alias : Slate
Extremely enjoyable .