'Top Five' is ostensibly soul-deep but needs more than smirks and scowls
鈥淭op聽Five鈥� is being heavily promoted as the Chris Rock movie to end聽all Chris Rock movies 鈥� the first time he has really brought his stand-up聽smarts to the big screen. While it may be an improvement over his other聽movie outings (it鈥檚 certainly a lot raunchier), I don鈥檛 see this film as such a聽great leap forward. Rock plays Andre Allen, a comedian-turned-movie star聽who longs to get back to his stand-up roots. Prodded by a confrontational聽entertainment journalist (Rosario Dawson) doing a profile on him, Andre聽eventually works his way back to authenticity.
Or so we are meant to believe. The big stand-up set with which he聽concludes the film isn鈥檛 the tell-all laugh-riot it鈥檚 meant to be. Rock, who聽also wrote and directed, may have modeled his film on Richard Pryor鈥檚聽semiautobiographical 鈥淛o Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling,鈥� but, unlike聽Pryor, Rock doesn鈥檛 have a tortuous and conflicted screen presence. He鈥檚聽not really an actor; he鈥檚 a deliverer of lines. This sort of thing may not be聽a big problem with some comics 鈥� Jerry Seinfeld, for example, who shows聽up in a cameo, is essentially a human joke machine on 鈥淪einfeld鈥� 鈥� but for聽an ostensibly soul-deep movie like this to work, we need more than smirks聽and scowls. Grade:聽C+ (Rated R for strong sexual content, nudity, crude humor, language throughout and some drug use.)
