Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
An enjoyable documentary, with some painless lessons. And a good heart, too .

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
Although its chief asset is its inherently entertaining subject matter, "Monkey Kingdom" does far more than just let the cameras roll: It teases a compelling drama out of one monkey tribe's complicated social hierarchy .

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Monkey Kingdom" tugs our heartstrings to the top of the trees. With a lot of patience, and perhaps a little trickery, directors Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill have produced a simian "Cinderella."

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
If you don't love monkeys already - and really, we all should - then "Monkey Kingdom" will swing you in the right direction.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
"Monkey Kingdom" clocks in at a very digestible 82 minutes and doesn't overstay its welcome. It doesn't monkey around - that's left to the film's subjects, who are more than happy to oblige.

Name : Stephen Farber / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The film should hit the sweet spot for family audiences.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
Stick around for the credits to find out how pivotal scenes were shot for this worthy addition to Disney's long tradition of nature family films.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Monkeys.

Name : Mark Jenkins / Alias : NPR
As much fun as a tree full of toque macaques, Monkey Kingdom is arguably the most entertaining of Disneynature's eight features.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
You know how nature docs work. You forgive the hoked-up comic relief . and tasteful allusions to death and dying and procreation because the tight shots of Maya's lil' Kip are so durn cuuuuute.

Name : Liam Lacey / Alias : Globe and Mail
The story of the colony's exile and return feels like a dull sermon, but the animals themselves, with their expressive faces and Moe Howard hairdos, can switch from slapstick to pathos faster than Charlie Chaplin.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
This may be an unabashed, Disneyfied version of nature. But it's also fun, touching, and expertly assembled.

Name : Michael Rechtshaffen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The film offers a valuable life lesson in the powers of determination and timing, but most of all it's darned entertaining.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Monkey Kingdom is delightful, and its swinging and vaulting best any stuntwork you'll see in this year's summer blockbusters .

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
A populist take on simian society and alpha leadership leads to an entertaining look at caste systems in the animal kingdom.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
You're likely to laugh and learn in equal measure-and so will your little ones.

Name : Janice Page / Alias : Boston Globe
It's been clear for awhile now that Tina Fey rules. "Monkey Kingdom" is just the latest entertainment to benefit.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
You couldn't do much better than "Monkey Kingdom" to get kids invested in learning about, and protecting, the natural world.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
The cheekiest, funniest, and most purely entertaining entry in the Disneynature series.

Name : Neil Genzlinger / Alias : New York Times
It's hard to imagine what message children will take away from this film other than that monkeys are just like characters in a fictional Disney movie, which they are not.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
Dope digs into racial culture in a real way with Malcolm struggling with the fact that he doesn't fit being a geek or a menace to society, and it's a hoot to root him on as he finds his place somewhere in between.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
Here is the rare movie overstuffed with memorable moments that would have been better if there had been fewer of them.

Name : Dennis Harvey / Alias : Variety
The cast, drawn from comedy, rap, TV, modeling and other spheres, is sharply on form throughout, as is Famuyiwa's direction; the pic's esprit is amplified by every editorial trick in the book, from split-screen to freeze-frames.

Name : Kevin C. Johnson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Dope" is funny, slick and sharp.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
The film's ability to confound expectations while delivering some big laughs may be its most crowd-pleasing characteristic but the anti-stereotype message rings clear as a bell throughout.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Shameik Moore is a forceful, sympathetic locus, with an appealing gentleness of spirit that in no way seems entirely innocent. There's a drive there. As for Zoe Kravitz, she is having one terrific year.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
This vibrant film is a bit of a mess, but it's a beautiful one.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Writer-director Rick Famuyiwa . doubles down on an applying-to-Harvard satire that both upends demographic expectations while insisting (at times a bit strenuously) that we all aim a little higher.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
"Dope" may be the perfect movie for the summer of 2015.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
In an era full of indifferent, cookie-cutter indies, an excess of ideas and personality is hardly a bad thing.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The tone of "Dope" is very interesting - funny, but rarely stupid-funny. The film does not wear its serious observations, about aspirations and realities and hypocrisies of all kinds (not just racial), in a heavy fashion.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
As a comedy, the film isn't especially funny, and as a screwball drug caper a la "Go," it's raggedly plotted, with ridiculous coincidences popping up everywhere.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Shameik Moore gives a smashing breakout performance in a comedy of social expectation that plays like an exhilarating gift.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's a remorselessly entertaining, Frankenstein's monster of pop-culture borrowings and appropriations. So much so that it becomes very much its own thing.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"Dope" is the bomb.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Be sure to stay for the end credits. No other summer-movie credit crawl is going to get audiences dusting off their old Running Man and Cabbage Patch dance moves like this one. Take that, Jurassic World.

Name : Julian Carrington / Alias : Globe and Mail
Even as Famuyiwa acknowledges the preconceptions that Malcolm's blackness engenders, he invites audiences to identify with the character on the basis of his relatable interests, aspirations and vulnerabilities.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
The acting is uniformly good. This is Moore's first big role, and he delivers a performance both entertaining and believable.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Again and again, Dope puts us in Malcolm's Air Jordans, letting us sweat or fear or hope right with him.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It's downright dainty as far as plot, but a mostly tasty layer cake of drugs, jokes, sex, jokes, cool young cast members, jokes, 1992 hip-hop, cartoony characters, a heist and a lot more jokes.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
If "Dope" were as earnest as Malcolm seems to be, you might expect it to be a bit of a bore. No worries on that count, though.

Name : Boyd van Hoeij / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A funny and often intelligent crowd-pleaser about three geeks who get smart about drug-dealing.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
A narrative as freewheeling as this one might ordinarily daze and confuse. But Malcolm makes for such a forceful character, it's easy to go along with whatever direction he's headed in.

Name : Patrick Dunn / Alias : Detroit News
When so many black movie characters are simple stereotypes, it's a pleasure to see a film with real wit about the benefits and pitfalls of playing to and against those expectations.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"Dope" is, in the end, just another unfunny grab bag of stereotypes. Don't believe the hype.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Moore, who's done some TV work and is also a singer and dancer, emerges as a genuine movie star in "Dope." He's very good looking and has charisma to burn, and he controls the screen in every scene he's in. Which is practically every scene.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A freewheeling comedy about sex, drugs and identity politics.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
Mr. Famuyiwa . shoves disparate genre elements together as if pulling jigsaw puzzle pieces from a half-dozen different boxes, and if the finished work isn't quite convincing, it's still fun to look at.

Name : Randy Myers / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
While Famuyiwa deserves the lion's share of acclaim for making "Dope" such an inventive, hyperactive and electrifying comedy, it is Moore who gives "Dope" its big heart.

Name : Jordan Hoffman / Alias : New York Daily News
The tone is fast and funny, with a modern "Risky Business" or "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" vibe, but there's an additional layer that stems from the violence of the neighborhood.

Name : Mark Feeney / Alias : Boston Globe
"Dope" is too smart and lively to be dismissed. It's even original in its mixing of ingredients, however unoriginal those ingredients may be. But it's also unfeeling and, beneath its in-the-hood surface, as much a bit of artifice as a Wes Anderson movie.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
A fantastical, slight, and occasionally fun, hip hop-scored romp.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
Dope's biggest strength lies in its affectionate and honest portrait of a different kind of young urban blackness than we're used to seeing on movie screens.