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'Top Five': Top Shelf
By Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires Film Critic
11:42AM / Friday, December 26, 2014
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Popcorn Column
by Michael S. Goldberger  

Paramount Pictures 
Chris Rock takes inspiration from his comedic life in 'Top Five,' with Rosario Dawson.

With Chris Rock's "Top Five," about a revelatory day in the life of a famous comedian/film star, I expected funny, but got much better.

More or less autobiographical, it's the classic Pagliacci tale contemporized, about the clown laughing on the outside, crying on the inside, just busting to be taken seriously. Approaching his 50th birthday, Rock turns this leaf at about the same time in his career that Woody Allen added the darker yin to his zany yang ... apprising us of the headier, more weighty aspects of his ruminations.

Here, he is Andre Allen, formerly of the New York City projects, and now a rich movie star on final approach to the celebrity wedding of the year. Scheduled to be broadcast around the globe, it will link him to reality-TV luminary Erica Long, a fame-seeker personified played by Gabrielle Union. You'd think he'd be happy. But alas, though there is trouble in paradise, serendipitously arriving to get to the bottom of said rub is Rosario Dawson's Chelsea Brown, a single mom and struggling reporter with some heavy baggage of her own.

out of 4

Yeah, you can figure out where this is headed. But that's OK because the going is good. Rock, who wrote, directed and then plopped himself into the center of his candid divulgences, peppers the road to a bevy of life-affirming epiphanies with scads of humorous commentary along the way.

We tune in just in just in time to witness the fallout resulting from Andre's just released, would-be pièce de résistance, "Uprize," a graphic, no holds-barred chronicling of the Haitian slave rebellion. So far, the box office is not so good. The general buzz and upshot? 'We liked you better when you were funny.' But, just like Joel McCrea's John L. Sullivan, comic filmmaker extraordinaire in Preston Sturges's masterful "Sullivan's Travels" (1941), he wants to be appreciated for his humanitarian insight and kinship with his fellow man.

However, there is no time to dwell and stew, at least not without also negotiating the whirlwind of hoops and barrels a headliner must slip through on a daily basis. The feverish time management, skillfully depicted via astute direction and editing, allows Rock to visit his protagonist's past and present in quick-spinning, Lazy Susan style, with Dawson's splendidly etched, pretty observer in tow to serve as tacit moral center.

The recurring theme, a demand harped upon ad nauseam by both Andre and Chelsea as they navigate NYC and attempt to also find random oases from their chosen rat races, is honesty, a commodity complexly subject to each character's sliding scale of just what the truth is. Especially funny and telling about the rags-to-riches experience is a visit to the old neighborhood where those who knew Andre when, unabashedly and with love-jealousy embellishment, delight in exposing their native son. Of course everyone says they were funnier. Tracy Morgan is a hoot.

Meanwhile, back in Tinseltown, Erica is taking care of all the wedding arrangements, her every decision from caterer to place settings being tweeted for mass consumption. Andre, obviously masking his chagrin, has nothing to say about it ... after all, "weddings are for women." But journalist Chelsea questions the passivity. "OK, OK," Andre concedes ... Erica helped the recovering alcoholic get clean. A flashback showing him at his nadir while in Houston for a gig features Cedric the Entertainer in a riotous stint that is at once calamitously and tragically funny.

There is plenty of humor throughout the mini-biography, though rarely freestanding and simply to get a laugh. "Top Five" is first about the human condition, the contextual drollery emanating from its observations. This entails a scattershot treatment of just about anything under the sun, but with special attention paid to race relations and the war between the sexes.

Plus, there is a fulfilling of that long-established tradition when one's funny business goes Hollywood. Like Jack Benny, Phil Silvers, Red Skelton and other top bananas who have memorialized their talent on the silver screen, Chris Rock assumes his place as our alter-everyman. Traversing life's travails, he is the comedian as Houdini, extricating himself from the crucible in which the plot has placed him by virtue of his wit. Of course he is likeable. But above all, as purveyor of those sensitive issues that need a good, cathartic airing, he is trustworthy.

A superb cast of supporting players supplies filigree for the character sketch. Particularly informing is the bond Andre shares with Silk, his childhood pal-turned-bodyguard/personal manager, excellently exacted by J.B. Smoove. Symbolic of the love and friendship necessary to making sure fame doesn't consume those talented folk lucky enough to attain it, the chemistry movingly speaks of relationships. It's this sort of insight that, despite the plot's comfortable predictability, should put "Top Five" high up on your moviegoing list.

"Top Five," rated R, is a Paramount Pictures release directed by Chris Rock and stars Chris Rock, Rosario Dawson and J.B. Smoove. Running time: 102 minutes

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