TOP FIVE: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

TOP FIVE (Dir. Chris Rock, 2014)

Finally, a good Chris Rock movie!

Yes, the third time is definitely the charm in the actor/comedian�s latest directorial effort after the critical and commercial flops that were HEAD OF STATE (2003) and I THINK I LOVE MY WIFE (2007).

In the semi-autobiographical TOP FIVE, Rock portrays movie star funnyman Andre Allen, who just like Rock�s idol Woody Allen in STARDUST MEMORIES, repeatedly says �I don�t want to make funny movies anymore.�

Rock�s Allen wants to hang up the bear costume he wore in the �Hammy the Bear� comedy buddy-cop franchise and be taken seriously in a historical drama about Haitian revolutionary Dutty Boukman called �Uprize,� which looks like a boring piece of Oscar bait.



Shades of TROPIC THUNDER, shades of Entourage, shades of every movie satirizing celebrity, but that�s so not a bad thing in these capable hands.

The film centers around Rock doing publicity for �Uprize� on its opening day, which is on the eve of his much hyped wedding to Gabrielle Union as socialite/reality TV star Erica Long.

In one of her most appealing performances, Rosario Dawson plays a New York Times reporter doing a profile on Rock, which he has mixed feelings about because the Times film critic, the fictitious James Nielson, has panned all his previous output.

With Rock and Dawson tooling around New York conversing about everything from PLANET OF THE APES to appraising favorite comic icons (Rock calls Charlie Chaplin �the KRS-One of comedy�), TOP FIVE can been seen as a �hangout movie.� Especially in a scene in which they visit Rock�s childhood home and chill with his family and childhood friends, mostly made up of SNL alumni including Jay Pharoah, Leslie Jones, and most hilariously, yet also sadly, a pre-accident Tracy Morgan, in which they discuss their individual top five rappers of all-time.

The laughs are consistent throughout, though some of the less successful bits concern relationship stuff. When Dawson catches her boyfriend cheating with another man and recounts via flashbacks how she should�ve known he was gay because of his anal fixation, it comes across like a throwaway joke sequence on the sitcom The Mindy Project, and not just because Dawson�s boyfriend is played by Anders Holm, who had an arc as one of Mindy Kaling�s suitors.

Otherwise, Rock, who unlike on his other films as director wrote this without a co-writer, has constructed a solid, thoughtful comedy that gives a bunch of his talented friends a chance to shine. 

An extended strip club scene, another of the many points in which the movie earns its hard R-rating, has funny turns by Jerry Seinfeld (you haven�t lived until you�ve seen Seinfeld make it rain at a strip club), Whoopi Goldberg, and Adam Sandler (funnier than he's been in a while on the big screen) playing themselves, and in another laugh out loud bit set in a jail cellblock, DMX sings and somehow nails Chaplin�s �Smile� in an unironic manner. J.B. Smoove and Cedric the Entertainer also amuse in their sideline roles. If you're a comedy fan at all, you won't want to miss this movie.

Resembling a hip (or hip hop) take on prime period Woody Allen, TOP FIVE is a bit uneven, and it won�t make my actual top 5 (or top 10) of movies of the year, but it�s an immensely enjoyable and heartfelt project that�s a big leap forward for Rock. Here�s hoping he builds on it � i.e. makes more ambitious and worthwhile work � instead of going back to the same ole crap.



In other words, I hope he makes like his character turning down another Hammy movie, and doesn�t take the call asking him to appear in GROWN UPS 3.

While movies like GROWN UPS and the assorted rom coms and animated films that have dominated his career of late have made me forget how crucial Rock can be, TOP FIVE really reminded me big time.

More later...

22 JUMP STREET: A Funny As F*** Follow-up That Makes Fun Of Itself

Now playing at a multiplex near us all:



22 JUMP STREET 

(Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, 2014)

The first movie looked like it was going to be crappy, but actually turned out to be fairly funny in its riffing on being a big screen version of a �80s undercover cop show.



The sequel amps it up by riffing on being a sequel to the surprise hit big screen version of a �80s undercover cop show.



And I laughed a lot more this time. A lot more.



Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum return as officers Schmidt and Jenko, the partying, gun-toting duo who engage in their own particular brand of bromantic banter. This time, much of their banter revolves around being on an investigation that's just like the last one, except now it's college, not high school, and they have a much bigger budget.

To amusingly justify the movie's title, the police team�s headquarters has been moved across the street into a bigger church with vastly upgraded facilities resulting in many comments about how needlessly expensive everything looks. 



Ice Cube, reprising his hilariously drawn role as Captain Dickson, even remarks that the place looks like it's out of IRON MAN.



Posing as college students at the fictional MC State (short for Metropolitan City State), Hill and Tatum's assignment involves finding who's been dealing the dangerous drug �WhyPhy� (WiFi).



In the process, Tatum falls in with some air-headed football players (Wyatt Russell and Jimmy Tatro), while Hill, in the guise of a slam poet, falls for an art student (Amber Stevens). The film here toys with rom com conventions, but funnily enough more with Tatum connecting with Russell (Kurt's son btw) than Hill's courtship of Stevens; they even make a meta joke about them having a meet-cute via the merging of a meat sandwich and a Q-Tip.



Popping up throughout the guys' campus shenanigans, are cameos by Patton Oswalt as a psychology professor, standup partners/identical twins the Lucas Brothers as drugged-up dorm neighbors, Peter Stormare as an international criminal only known as �Ghost,� along with, from the first film, Dave Franco, and Rob Riggle, now prison inmate lovers (Franco, not by choice).



Riggle was the previous films' secret bad guy, and there's one in this one too, but don't worry I won't spoil that tasty twist.



Gags about sequel tropes are joined by gags about how old the leads look to be college students (�I got 99 problems but being young ain't one,� Jillian Bell as Stevens' acerbic roommate quips), gags about how close to gay these guys get in their bro-bonding, gags about college sex (the �walk of shame� bits are dead on), just gags about everything along these lines that they could stuff into the 112 minute running time.



Directors Phil Lord and Christopher, the dudes behind the also ultra meta, and equally hilarious THE LEGO MOVIE, working from a screenplay by Michael Bacall (writer of the first one), Oren Uziel, and Rodney Rothman, never let up on the film's sense of fun right through to end where they go from making fun of sequels to taking on entire franchises.



Hill and Tatum are very funny here, they play off each other brilliantly and again prove that their pairing is no fluke, but Ice Cube, in his expanded role, is an angry comedy machine! In a restaurant-set scene in which he finds out that his daughter is dating Hill, Cube's performance is a tour de force of comic acting.



22 JUMP STREET is a funny as fuck follow-up that makes fun of itself for its simple cynical existence as a sequel, but it never makes fun of us for watching it. It wants us to be as in on the joke as they are, and have us all laugh together. With this many surefire laughs, and well tapped talent on display, I even felt a bit laughed out afterwards. Still, make sure you stay through the end credits for the final stinger.



Oddly, one of the only joke misfires was a reference to the comedy stylings of Tracy Morgan *. This was, of course, filmed last year, and it's so not a diss, but it got a bit of a gasp from the audience at the screening I attended. However, that bit of bad timing didn't throw off the crowd for long; they were rolling as soon as the next joke came around, which was less than 10 seconds later.



* If you haven't heard, Tracy Morgan is currently in critical but stable condition after his car crash last weekend. Film Babble Blog sends its best wishes for Morgan, the other victims of the accident, and their families.



More later...