Top Five

Undoubtedly, Chris Rock is on my Top Five list of contemporary comedians. A tireless, down-to-Earth, insightful, stand-up for over 20 years, Rock's material gets better and better as he ages, and he also evinces an exciting desire to try new things and expand his repertoire. In the past decade, he’s produced the provocative television show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, made his Broadway acting début in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherfucker with the Hat, and written and directed three feature films: Head of State (2003), I Think I Love My Wife (2007), and his latest, Top Five.

The new movie will probably be taken more seriously than most of Rock's cinematic output to date, full as it is of sharp observations about a wide range of subjects. Regrettably, though, the film's narrative is not particularly engaging, and less perceptive and well-crafted than many of the comedian's long-form stage routines. Rock stars as Andre Allen, a comedian-turned-movie star who has grown dissatisfied with making generic Hollywood comedies and yearns to create more serious art. The film opens in the midst of a press junket for Allen's first dramatic picture, in which he plays a Haitian slave revolutionary. After being subjected to the indignities and insults of one inane interview after another, he finally meets his match in Chelsea Brown (the reliably gr eat Rosario Dawson), a reporter dispatched by the New York Times to write a story about him. Although Allen is suspicious of anyone from the Times, whose critics have savaged his lowbrow films, he finds himself drawn to the beautiful, intelligent Brown, and the two of them eventually ditch the safe confines of Allen's limousine and spend a day playing hooky in New York. They walk around the city; explore Allen's past and present by visiting his family members, friends, and old neighborhoods; share questions, answers, and anecdotes about coming up as a young black entertainer in the age of hip-hop; and discuss the specific conundrums of being middle-aged, rich, famous, and black in America.

Promising subject matter, or so it would seem, but, like Rock’s other films, Top Five never becomes truly challenging or thought-provoking. Rock clearly draws inspiration for this picture from another Allen, Woody, and his Stardust Memories (which itself draws inspiration from Federico Fellini’s 8 ½). But Rock’s erratic filmmaking style is more along the lines of Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in New York, the 2011 rom-com in which he played Delpy’s grounded boyfriend. Allen and Brown walk and talk in the streets of Manhattan like Woody Allen and Mia Farrow in so many comedic dramas of the ‘80s, and like Delpy and Ethan Hawke in the European environs of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise pictures, but Dawson's lines feel so clumsy and contrived that it kills any chemistry between the two characters.  

Allen and Brown seem to be visiting a museum of the past, observing lifeless exhibits from behind safety glass, rather than probing into each other’s subconscious and rummaging around in dark corners. The supposedly urbane Times writer asks banal, boilerplate questions, the type we would expect from the lowest level of entertainment reporter. And the irascible, profane movie star tells stories that don't seem any different from the chestnuts he’d dutifully recite to any interviewer. The circumstances of Allen's life change considerably during the film’s one-day duration, but he’s the same person at the end of the film as at the beginning. Allen’s character arc feels like an artificial construct that Rock the writer doesn’t fully believe in.

None of these complaints would matter much if Top Five were a hilarious comedy, but since it plays more like a personal essay, the aspects that feel artificial stand out awkwardly. Rock makes his points about popular black male entertainers with a broad brush. Andre’s claim to fame is a movie series in which he plays a talking bear in a goofy costume that all but reduces his persona to a disembodied, color-neutral, and almost gender-neutral voice. But when we see clips of him in the bear costume it’s difficult to believe that this character would in reality be beloved by movie audiences.  Similarly, the brief glimpses we get of Andre’s new, serious film about the Haitian slave revolution feels false in terms of how a picture of this sort would actually be marketed. If Top Five were an over-the-top farce, all this exaggeration would hit home with pointed bite, but in the film’s straight-up context most of its underdeveloped observations play as intellectual straw men. 

Some sequences, like an early set piece featuring Cedric the Entertainer, are hysterical, but it’s surprising how few actual laughs there are in the picture, considering how many terrific comedians show up in small roles. Rock seems less interested in showcasing the myriad ways that funny people make the best social critics than in trying to capture a realistic, less-polished version of how he and his friends genuinely talk when they’re hanging out. 

The title Top Five refers to the practice of ranking hip-hop artists, which nearly every character in the movie does at some point. Far be it from me, on the film5000 blog, to dismiss the idea of ratings and list-making, but I just can’t figure out what these top five lists have to do with the story, or how they illuminate any of the film’s themes. The movie’s title seems oddly disconnected from its content. 

Near the end, Allen has a Sullivan’s Travels moment, when he goes to a comedy club and performs a stand-up set after years away from the stage. Watching Chris Rock do what he does best feels bittersweet: mastery in one medium does not necessarily translate to another, and I hope Rock won't have to abandon stand-up, as Woody Allen did before becoming a great filmmaker. But regardless of the movie’s specific problems, it’s never boring to watch this sharp comedian slowly develop into a writer/director, bending the medium to his own style and focusing on the subjects and forms that interest him, rather than trying to fit himself into a prescribed niche. Though Rock's first three films have been deeply flawed, I still look forward to seeing more movies in his bold, distinctive voice.