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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
We may have all been curious going in, but by the time the credits roll, there's another question that springs to mind: Is that all there is?

Name : Meghan Daum / Alias : Slate
A generic romance cynically engineered to appeal to the lowest common denominator of female fantasy.

Name : Chris Vognar / Alias : Dallas Morning News
The dashes of momentum are just a tease. It's hard to remember the last time this much sex was this tedious.

Name : Courtney Shea / Alias : Globe and Mail
Nobody sweats or pants or experiences onscreen ecstasy, which is presumably how a movie about violent sex manages to avoid an NC-17 rating, but the result feels like 50 shades of beige.

Name : Lisa Schwarzbaum / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The movie Fifty Shades of Grey is considerably better written than the book. It is also sort of classy-looking, in a generic, TV-ad-for-bath-oil way.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
In the end, there's nothing here we haven't seen before. But there's also nothing as agonizingly awkward as James's prose.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
I wouldn't say that Taylor-Johnson has made a good movie from "Fifty Shades of Grey," precisely. That's asking too much.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
The whole thing's about as transgressive as ordering a Cabernet Sauvignon with your fish.

Name : Joy Tipping / Alias : Dallas Morning News
I'll go see the next movie quite happily.

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
Creating a genteel R-rated film from a very X-rated book is like making a Mamma Mia! movie without the songs.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
"Fifty Shades of Grey" the movie, for the record, is not quite as bad as "Fifty Shades of Grey" the book. But that's not saying much.

Name : Bruce Kirkland / Alias : Toronto Sun
Fifty Shades of Grey only has one shade: tedious self-pity. The other 49 shades promised in the title are missing from the movie version of the infamous novel.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Think of it as the "Downton Abbey" of bondage, designed neither to menace nor to offend but purely to cosset the fatigued imagination.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
I'm shocked - shocked, do you hear me?!? - that the film version of E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey is such a dull, decorous affair, about as erotic as an ad for Pottery Barn. Strictly intended for gluttons for punishment-by boredom.

Name : Karen D'Souza / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
About an hour in, it finally dawned on me that perhaps the movie was giving me insights into masochism after all. As the minutes slowly, painfully ticked by I came to accept my punishment.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
I'm not going to pretend I didn't like this movie, just as I can't pretend there's nothing wrong with it. But try thinking of it this way: It's an event movie that's also a relationship drama, and that's rare.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Fifty Shades of Grey" doesn't entertainingly cross the line of good taste so much as trip and fall on it.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
My God, this thing goes on. By the time the two get busy in Christian's "playroom," the oomph has gone out of the whole erotic setup .

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Aiming to please, the filmmakers submit without hesitation to the bold yet hokey source material, with leads Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson breathing a crucial third dimension into cutout characters.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Yet the film's biggest problem is its two stars. Despite all the ripped abs and exposed breasts, blindfolds and cuffs, there are few sparks between them. Without that, Fifty Shades of Grey feels as cold and sterile as Grey's sleek penthouse.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Sitting through the turgid and tedious S&M melodrama that is Fifty Shades of Grey may feel like its own form of torture.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Gone are the truly dreadful aspects of the book, and the biggest surprise may be that Ana and Christian have developed senses of humor.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
The only thing Dakota Johnson can't pull off is her character's over-dramatic name - she introduces herself as Anastasia Steele like an apology.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Despite the endless sex, a highly unsatisfying encounter. Cold as a fish and almost as dumb.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
Maybe in future installments there will even be something that resembles a plot. For now, the entire movie is about as sexy as a root canal.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
"The stylish and mostly satisfying film will be [a blockbuster], and deservedly so. Starring a vivacious Dakota Johnson and a game Jamie Dornan, Taylor-Johnson's erotic romance is a skillful distillation of James' first book."

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Johnson is rather sweet, though, and if she played a role that required her to look more than alternately smitten and poleaxed, she could score big. But now that Fifty Shades is poised to be a franchise, will she have that chance?

Name : Katie Rife / Alias : AV Club
Leads Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson, both of whom spend the majority of the film supposedly desperately longing for each other, have so little chemistry that it gives the sexy goings-on a rather clinical feel.

Name : Connie Ogle / Alias : Miami Herald
Despite what you might fear, the movie is not torture. And even if it doesn't inspire lust, you will breathe a warm sigh of relief, thinking: This could have been so much worse.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
For a movie where people are naked for a large chunk of time and play at bondage and dominance (without ever really seeming all that committed to it), it sure is boring.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Glossy, well cast, and a consistent hoot until it becomes a serious drag.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The film doesn't culminate in anything. It's a bunch of scenes that end before any kind of satisfying conclusion.

Name : Meredith Goldstein / Alias : Boston Globe
The director of the much-anticipated adaptation, Sam Taylor-Johnson, made what could have been a trashy TV movie into well-conceived cinema.

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : Time Out
Fifty Shades of Grey is a sex-positive but hopelessly soft-core erotic drama that fails to be even a fraction as titillating as the E.L. James books that inspired it. And yet, that's exactly why it works.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Isn't the stuff of bondage and discipline, sexual role play, silky blindfolds, and whips and floggers supposed to be, well, exciting?

Name : Christopher Orr / Alias : The Atlantic
It's been said that the movie contains 20 minutes of sex; if this is the case, it must contain at least 40 minutes of Ana biting her lip or putting a pencil in her mouth.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Actors Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan make an appealing couple and battle mightily against the flat, linear plotting, though when the story ended inconclusively I wasn't eager to follow them through the inevitable sequels.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Basically, they made a lousy, mid-2000s-era Katherine Heigl romance with a handful of explicit sex scenes spliced throughout the familiar cliches.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The likably coy Johnson has no chemistry with the dreary, self-serious Dornan. He's a casting disaster .

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
"Fifty Shades of Grey" turns out to be an intriguing tussle - not in the sack, or in the Red Room of Pain, but in its internal war between the dubious erotica of James' novel (the first of three) and the far craftier trash offered by the movie.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Fifty Shades of Grey delivers, however ponderously, on its promise of pop transgressiveness.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Vainly seeking to reach the widest possible audience, the makers of this exercise in banality stripped it of almost anything that could cause offence.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : ChristyLemire.com
It realizes this story is ridiculous in ways the book itself never could. It has an actual sense of humor.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
"Fifty Shades of Grey" might not be a good movie - O.K., it's a terrible movie - but it might nonetheless be a movie that feels good to see, whether you squirm or giggle or roll your eyes or just sit still and take your punishment.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
An unashamed and genially preposterous fairy tale, a kind of "Cinderella" with restraints, "50 Shades" is about as believable as "Jack and the Beanstalk," albeit considerably more kinky in intent.

Name : Elizabeth Weitzman / Alias : New York Daily News
Johnson is a true find: She's so committed, she makes Ana's every discovery - in or out of the bedroom - convincing.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Who would have imagined that a movie about sex could be so boring?