Top Five

Year Released: 2014

MPAA Rating: R

Run Time: 1 hr. 42 mins

"Top Five" was written, directed and stars Chris Rock as Andre Allen, an immensely successful comedian/movie star.  As we join Allen's story, he has decided he wants to make more serious films and is doing a press junket for his first major dramatic release, "Uprize" about a Haitian slave rebellion.  Allen is back in his hometown of New York City, which brings him back to the people he grew up with and still calls friends.  The main plot device of the film is Allen being interviewed throughout his day by Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson), a writer for a publication that viciously trashed his previous film.  I had heard that Chris Rock had consulted with Louis CK prior to writing this and you can sort of see elements of Louis' style throughout.  It is an interesting look behind the curtain of what a press junket is like as you see him spend his morning at Sirius XM moving from show-to-show (One of the funnier scenes is when Allen is cutting promos for a Sirius radio show, being coached by the producer, played by the great Brian Regan), and then doing phoners with radio stations around the country, all while preparing for his upcoming wedding to a reality TV star (Gabrielle Union) and being followed around by Brown, who is hitting him with her interview questions throughout.  Allen is also struggling with sobriety after a stint in rehab, so the stress of the junket and lukewarm reception to his dramatic turn makes things even more trying for him.  "Top Five" is not one of those "laughs per minute" comedies as it tells a real story but it is a funny film.  The movie is absolutely peppered with cameos from comedians that Rock has worked with in some capacity at some time in his career and probably the funniest sequence is a flashback to Allen "hitting bottom" when on a bender with Cedric The Entertainer, who plays a manager of some comedy function he is attending at the time.  Although it wasn't quite as funny as I might have hoped, the human aspects of the writing more than made up for it. Allen is someone you genuinely root for as you wonder if he can stay on track while all seems to be going wrong for him.  Rock did a really nice job writing this and directing a who's-who of modern comedy stars.  

Grade: B