Chris Rock's charming and funny romcom rips along with real heart and spirit while making some excellent observations about racism, politics and black America.
As if to smack down every Hollywood cliché and offensive stereotype about black America, here’s freewheeling stand-up turned movie star Chris Rock with that rare thing - a smart and very likeable romantic comedy.
In a knowing self portrait, Rock plays Andre Allen, a stand-up turned movie star who’s made his name in a loo-la Lethal Weapon meets Beverly Hills Cop franchise called Hammy in which he plays a talking, all-action bear with a badge.
Ludicrous for sure but no more so than Andre’s latest vehicle, Uprize - a blood-soaked epic about the Haitian slave rebellion of 1791. Uprize is a very tasteless and very funny send up of Tarantino’s Django Unchained and Alex Haley’s Roots which also nicely skewers the USA’s agonised relationship with its past in movies such as 12 Years a Slave.
Andre hawks his new serious side around to appalled movie critics and fans who just want him to be funny again in another Hammy movie. He longs to make the tricky transition from crazy action hero to serious artist, not unlike Mel Gibson’s evolution from crazy old Riggs in Lethal Weapon to director of Apocalypto.
He is also struggling to stay clean after years of well-documented alcoholism and drug addiction. And then there his upcoming marriage to a crass reality TV star, played with gusto by Gabrielle Union, who makes Kim Kardashian look like Dot Cotton.
Gabrielle Union plays Andre's ravenous reality TV star fiancée
When no lesser an august organ than The New York Times pitches for an in-depth interview at this crossroads in Andre's career and life, he is deeply suspicious but reluctantly lets journalist Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson) follow him around for one day as he endures endless radio and press publicity for his new movie.
What follows is a very funny and semi-autobiographical journey that delves into Andre’s addled psyche, his family background as a poor boy from the Brooklyn with a quick mouth, and the pressures and inanities of modern fame. It also engages intelligently with politics, rap music, and the stupefying Hollywood/TV axis of instant and accelerated celebrity where talent is an afterthought.
Studded with excellent cameos from Jerry Seinfeld, rapper DMX, Whoopi Goldberg and, in an admirable nod to inclusiveness, dunderhead-in-chief, Adam Sandler, Top Five cracks along with real heart and spirit. But Rock also paints a picture of how black culture is ignored and demonised on one level and appropriated and patronised on another.
Andre endures endless radio and press publicity for his new movie
However, he keeps his simmering rage in check and rises above the agonies of racism with dignity and humour and not the pained lectures of an Oprah movie. The growing romance between the journalist and star is touching and believable and Rock even shoehorns in (put intended) a nifty Cinderella motif.
There was no need to fall back on the safety net of a conventional narrative and plot - it works just fine as a fast-moving romcom with all the rapid-fire dialogue and pizzazz of modern rap.
It's not pushing it to say that Top Five with it's talky script and leisurely strolls around Manhattan has something of the spirit of the earlier, funnier Woody Allen pulsing through its veins.
Alan Corr
