Top Five
I caught Chris Rock 's Top Five over the weekend. It feels too ironic, given the premise of the film, to say that it wasn't as funny as I had hoped it would be, but it wasn't as funny as I had hoped it would be. Andre Allen (Rock) is a performer who gained fame as a stand up comic. He then hit it big in a series of low-brow high-gross flicks, buddy cop movies in which he appeared in a bear costume. Allen wants to be taken seriously as an artistic voice. He hasn't done stand up in years, he hasn't done a fourth sequel to the cop schlock, and he is about to marry a reality TV star. We meet him on the day his latest film (a serious one, about Haitian revolutionaries) hits theaters, and spend the day with him. The similarities between Allen's career trajectory and Rock's are obvious and expected—you're supposed to write what you know. Allen happens to be a recovering alcoholic; fear of doing stand up sober is part of what is keeping him off the stage...