Top Five: Movie Review

Chris Rock took way too long to play himself in a movie.

Or perhaps it's more accurate to say he took far too long to make a movie that sounds like he does. That's the immediate thing to leap out about Top Five, the third film the comic has written, directed and starred in but the first to come across as a true Chris Rock joint: The dialogue has the tone, pacing and detonation of his standup. In the opening scene, Rock, playing a comedian and actor named Andre Allen, strolls down a New York street with Rosario Dawson and explains why America will never vote an "out-handicapped" candidate into the White House: "You run for president, you don't roll for president!" Rock has never been a great actor, but like Louis C.K. and Larry David, he's finally discovered that the trick is to make it so you hardly have to act at all. 

Allen isn't Rock's precise analog: The real man has never had a franchise as successful as Hammy, a series of buddy comedies starring Allen as a wisecracking cop…who also happens to be a bear. Like Michael Keaton in Birdman, Allen hopes his turn as a serious auteur, in a film about the Haitian slave rebellion, will shift critical perception and silence the chorus of "Hey, Hammy!" that follows him wherever he goes. Such artistic fidgeting is familiar to Rock, who's gone from producing Pootie Tang to remaking Eric Rohmer, yet has never transcended his standup specials. "I don't feel funny anymore," Allen tells Dawson, playing a New York Times reporter. Rock isn't coy about his Woody Allen worship, and this is unabashedly his Stardust Memories, minus the flights of surrealism—though there are a few moments toward the end, with cameos no one should spoil, that might qualify.

Top Five's plot bends toward rom-com conventionality in its third act, with a twist you could see coming from space. Up until then, it's a loose, engaging walk-and-talk, something like Before Sunrise meets Seinfeld, energized by interjections of hip-hop brashness. (The film's title is a reference to Andre Allen and his siblings' penchant for ranking their favorite rappers.) And even after, Rock proves that, for truly hilarious people, funny always finds a way, whether they're feeling it or not. "Please lower your expectations," Allen tells the crowd at the Comedy Cellar when he stops by for an impromptu set. As a filmmaker, Rock has just raised ours.

Critic's Grade: A-

SEE IT: Top Five is rated R. It opens Friday at Bridgeport, Division, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place.

WWeek 2015