Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Ah, well. All the best actors eventually get their Ishtar, right?

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
A Depression-era potboiler starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence that never manages to get past the feeling of a calculated Hollywood reunion.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Left for dead since 2012, Serena would better serve its stars by burial, not resurrection.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
It's reassuring, really, to be reminded that top-tier Hollywood stars can make lousy choices just like the rest of us.

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
Filmed in 2012 and finally limping into theaters like a glamorous zombie, the movie has star wattage but zero emotional voltage.

Name : Randy Myers / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
The film is haunted by a sense that something was overlooked in translation from the book.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Lawrence is the hottest actress in Hollywood and she and Cooper share six Oscar nominations, and one win, between them. But "Serena" uses muscles the costars of "Silver Linings Playbook" and "American Hustle" stars don't often get to flex.

Name : Cath Clarke / Alias : Time Out
We don't invest anything in either character, and with barely any tension, 'Serena' grabs neither head nor heart.

Name : Charlie Lyne / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
This is a film full of unremarkable compromises - the kind that result in a bland film rather than a bad one.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
The actors don't just look uncomfortable in their period duds, they also look uneasy in their own skins, which is a feat for two such natural, physically confident screen performers.

Name : Vadim Rizov / Alias : AV Club
There's simply not that much to see in the performances.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
Absolutely nothing works. No one seems to understand the place or the people. And the only thing gleaned from the lumber industry is that you can build an entire movie from performances made of wood.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
The choppily edited and thoroughly wooden "Serena'' fails to catch fire, even when everything literally goes up in flames. Basically, it's "Cold Mountain" without Renee Zellweger.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
It's painful to watch all that talent get wasted.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
What were Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence thinking? Seriously?

Name : Serena Donadoni / Alias : Village Voice
By making Serena ornamental, Bier diminishes her power, and Lawrence plays her as a petulant Lady Macbeth wannabe. Worse is Bradley Cooper, whose Pemberton comes off like an entitled scion, not a clear-cut timber king.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Given these unpromising circumstances, I was expecting something truly awful, and perhaps that might have been more fun to watch than this lugubrious period piece. The production values and the costumes are the true stars.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
Into each life some rain eventually falls, and in a bomb called Serena, golden couple Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, united for the third time onscreen, arrive soaking wet.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Funny how there are fans of Jennifer Lawrence who will never see her in "Serena." It's not her best film, but it contains one of her best performances, in a role that challenges her more than any other.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
Densely packed and gorgeously expressionist, the old-fashioned tragedy is very nearly a satisfying experience despite its various shortcomings.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
In other words, a lot of people realized they had an epic clunker on their hands.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
Bier's Danish-language work, usually structurally and emotionally cohesive to a fault, has rarely been this compellingly untidy.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Beating a dead horse barely begins to describe the task of writing about "Serena"; it's more like playing coroner.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Both actors, gracefully dressed and lightly anguished, draw deep on their professional aplomb in a bid to keep a straight face; the credible, bulked-up pain that Cooper brought to "American Sniper" seems a world away.

Name : Gary Goldstein / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The performers are as beautiful to look at here as they are intriguing to watch.

Name : Stephen Dalton / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Serena only has one key flaw: it is difficult to believe a single word of it, still less to care about these relentlessly selfish and short-sighted characters.

Name : Geoff Pevere / Alias : Globe and Mail
One of those movies that proves that the mere presence of all the right ingredients does not a happy meal make. It's all in the mixing.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Although the film got stuck in editing limbo for two years, no amount of cutting could rid the project of a diseased premise. Nor is it erotic or violent enough to be an effective critique of human nature.

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

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Monkeys.

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

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

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

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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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.