Top Five Swanner: Top Five is the new comedy from Chris Rock. The story follows Andre Adams, a former stand-up who transitioned in to movies, and somewhere along the way stopped being funny. On the day of his big new film opening and two days before his wedding he meets who might be the one. Chris Rock not only stars, but wrote and directed the film. Judd: The movie also stars Rosario Dawson as a NY Times journalist following Adams around for the day, covering the release of his new serious movie about a Haitian slave uprising, as well as Adams impending nuptials to a reality TV star. JB Smoove plays Adams best friend and right-hand man, and there are appearances throughout featuring todays current top black actors and comedians. With all that out of the way, I was not expecting Top Five to be as good and well written as it is. Granted, I wasnt expecting a Tyler Perry movie or another Soul Plane, but Top Five has all the heart, smarts and repeated viewability of some of the best comedies ever made. Chris Rock is playing in John Hughes and Woody Allen territory. Swanner: I had heard that this was Rocks Annie Hall and I can see that completely. The script is so smart and the performances are right on the mark. There are even scenes with Adam Sandler, Jerry Seinfeld and Whoopi Goldberg that are so much fun where they talk about the proper way to cheat in a relationship that are laugh out loud funny. It was an unexpected night of comedy for me that I cant get off my mind. Judd: What really stands out, for me, is the script. It is 100% spot on. To be honest, given Chris Rocks work history, I didnt think something like this was in him. The writing is smart and sharp; I would expect a script like this to come from Dave Chappelle or Louis CK -- comedians known for having brilliant insight on popular and political culture. This is like Larry The Cable Guy writing an article for The New Yorker. Swanner: Larry the Cable guy... That might be a bit much, but I know where youre coming from. I was actually starting to feel bad because I was feeling like those critics that tortured Adams with bad reviews... How hard I’ve been on the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson. Then I realized that if either of them could pull off something this good I would have to hit them with the whiffle bat. Cheers to Chris Rock for a brilliant script and Paltrow and Hudson...I still have the bat. Swanner: 3 ½ stars Judd: 3 ½ stars
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 21:59:59 +0000
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