Film review: Top Five

Chris Rock's latest project Top Five is a self-aware if somewhat scattered comedy.

In Top Five, Chris Rock does triple duty as writer, director and actor. The film also stars Gabrielle Union, left, as his TV-star fiancee. Ali Paige Goldstein / AP Photo/Paramount Pictures

Top Five

Director: Chris Rock

Starring: Chris Rock, Rosario Dawson, Kevin Hart

Four stars

Writer-director Chris Rock is not Andre Allen, the stand-up ­comedian-turned-movie star character he plays in Top Five. But it's almost impossible to watch his latest film – a cutting comedy about showbiz, creativity and ambition – without wondering what material Rock drew from his own life.

While that’s a fun and compelling draw, thankfully it is only part of the triumph of the film, as Rock manages to transcend the gimmick of fiction reflecting fact – and his larger-than-life persona – to create one of the most vibrant and self-aware comedies of the year.

Top Five is a story of a man who has become disconnected from his work and is looking for a change. On a single, jam-packed, New York day – the day his new movie opens – we accompany Andre on a press tour around the city. Along the way, we learn that he became a mainstream superstar by wearing a full-body bear suit and playing the catchphrase-happy character Hammy the Bear in three blockbuster movies.

Now sober, desperately scrabbling for relevance and about to marry a reality-­television star (Gabrielle Union), Andre only wants to be sincere. However, his new, “serious” movie, about a Haitian revolutionary, looks abysmal. It becomes clear that Andre is at a crossroads and even he isn’t convinced of his new path.

Things really get going when he hooks up with Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson), a quick-­witted New York Times reporter assigned to follow him around for an entire day. He resists, since the paper's critic has historically eviscerated his movies, but his agent (Kevin Hart) convinces him to go along with it anyway. Chelsea's a fan, he thinks.

That turns out to be half true. She was a fan, but now, like most of the world, she wonders why Andre isn’t funny anymore.

In his Hollywood world of suck-ups, she turns out to be a breath of fresh air and he is intrigued.

Long stretches of the movie ­focus on Chelsea and Andre walking through the city, talking, flirting and verbally sparring about all kinds of subjects: politics, relationships, addiction, sobriety.

It takes skilled performers and deft dialogue to make banal riffing compelling, and Rock and Dawson more than rise to meet the challenge. Just like in a great Woody Allen film or Richard Linklater’s Before... series, it would be easy enough to watch these two characters simply chat for an entire movie.

But Rock isn’t content to luxuriate with only the two leads, as fun as that would have been. Instead, he broadens Andre’s world with an all-star supporting cast the size of a football team.

Cedric the Entertainer pops up as a sleazy, hilarious local club promoter, J B Smoove steals scenes as his bodyguard and chauffeur, former 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan appears as one of his childhood friends, and Sherri Shepherd plays an ex-girlfriend. Jerry Seinfeld and a few other surprise, high-profile comedians even play themselves in a standout scene.

The most groundbreaking aspect of Top Five is that it defies categorisation. It's a romance, a gross-out comedy, a silly industry satire and a sweet look at an artist who's just trying to figure out what he wants – all at the same time.

That might sound as if it is scattered or unfocused, and in some cases it is. A few scenes go on too long and some of the dramatic notes don’t land as gracefully as they could.

But even if Rock doesn’t succeed in seamlessly weaving together all those disparate elements, he’s still created a complex, exciting patchwork that is just fun to exist in.

Rock has said that he wanted to make a movie that captures the energy of his stand-up. Top Five certainly fits the bill, and that’s no joke.