It's a familiar structure that Rock juggles well and fills with sharp, smart, and often hilarious take on the mid-life crisis of an artist caught between public expectations, private ambitions and anxieties, and professional compromises and commitments.

| Aug 20, 2023

An absolute embarrassment of riches.

| Original Score: A- | Aug 10, 2021

Rock and Dawson spark in long, uncut scenes of dialogue that echo Before Midnight. Flirting and sparring throughout the film, they are at the heart of the story but Rock has populated the movie with other interesting characters and cameos.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 2, 2021

On one hand, it's an insightful examination of fame and artistic freedom. On the other, it's a sexual comedy of the most obscene nature.

| Original Score: C+ | Jul 16, 2020

Top Five...finally gives Rock the filmic vehicle he has needed since he tried to transition to the screen.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 27, 2019

Big laughs and believable vulnerability. But it also has aged faster than Indiana Jones Nazis unable to spot the cup of a carpenter and relies on truly retrograde eye-rolling plot turns about reporters' motives.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 24, 2019

Featuring the funniest sex scene since Team America, and a film-stealing cameo from an unexpected rapper, Top Five is such an enjoyable watch that it's easy to ignore how slick and clever it often is.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 10, 2019

Rock's script isn't afraid to get raunchy, sometimes a little too much, but there is a bit of heart at the center. Dawson and Rock have the chemistry to make it work, even when it feels a little contrived.

| Jan 25, 2019

Let's hope that this wasn't just a one-off for the comedian, but something tells me that he has much more to say.

| Original Score: B | Dec 8, 2018

Though Rock is funny throughout the film, the story would have collapsed in the absence of the cameos.

| Aug 28, 2018

A weirdly hollow story that is neither funny enough nor moving enough.

| Aug 22, 2018

The film, like Rock, is impressive, gritty, real to the bone and sidesplittingly funny.

| Aug 20, 2018

This is not only the best movie thing accomplished stand-up comic Chris Rock will probably ever do. It is also one of the coolest and most endearing rom-coms of the past few years.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 6, 2018

This movie attacks comedy in so many various ways: snark, sarcasm, quips, one-lines, everything on such an intellectual level, especially if you know the pop culture references being made via certain moments in hip-hop or mainstream media.

| Jun 12, 2018

Chris Rock bleeds many elements of his stand-up comedy routine into a person that is simply sick and tired of being famous for lowbrow pandering slapstick comedy, possibly like himself

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 2, 2017

I went into Chris Rock's Top Five with a checklist of expectations, and I am happy to say that my expectations were met, and even exceeded in places.

| Oct 16, 2017

To watch this film is to see Chris [Rock]'s - and every comedian's - turbulent, messy, passionate, longstanding romance with his craft

| Original Score: B+ | Aug 17, 2017

Top Five does the trick.

| Aug 16, 2017

Overall, I appreciate what this film does in showcasing a more serious Chris Rock. I think it's his best film to date.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 15, 2017

The romance is contrived; the sexual jokes rarely land; and the cameos seem more for show than for storytelling. That's not to say that I didn't laugh, or enjoy it, but it's horribly predictable, and about as frequently tasteless as it is charming

| Aug 14, 2017