Top Five

There are those movies that you want to love and you end up loving them, and then there are those movies that you want to love, but just can't bring yourself to like. Top Five lands somewhere in the middle, but luckily, it barely leans towards the former. I like Chris Rock. I wouldn't say that I'm a fan of his, particularly, but he's definitely funny. I absolutely love Everybody Hates Chris and he has the ability to make me laugh about stuff that I don't know much about. I got to go to a free screening of this (yay for being a film student!) and he introduced the movie in person. He was talking about sports--something that I have no interest or knowledge in--and made everyone laugh out loud, including me. The first twenty minutes or so made me laugh, and they made me laugh really hard. Those bits of fun are scattered throughout, and they work well most of the time. It's the moments where the humor falls flat on its face that stands out. Now, Top Five has an small, incidental amount of irony about it. Chris Rock plays a more-or-less fictional version of himself who's sick of making funny movies and wants to be taken seriously. He's sort of washed up, so in a very odd way, this could draw comparisons to Birdman. A far more raunchy, more mainstream Birdman. Anyways, the ironic part is that this movie has some serious themes about it that no one in the audience seemed to take seriously. Our protagonist is an alcoholic and there are some moments of intended sincerity where everyone in the audience just laughed instead, because they were laughing moments before that. It's this type of tonal mishmash that works to the film's detriment. It's not a bad movie, it just could have been better. There are several interesting ideas here: wanting to reinvent oneself, facing criticism, and being perceived in a way that you don't want to be perceived. All of these themes have the potential to work, and there are definitely times where they do work. However, they're undermined by some humor that tries way too hard. I was laughing before, so I don't need to see Cedric the Entertainer (who's way too over the top here) aggressively boing two high women, followed by a shot of Chris Rock laying in a trashed bed which is littered with semen, all while naked. I really like Rosario Dawson and she does a good job here, so I don't need to see her shove a hot sauce-soaked tampon up a guy's ass during sex. (And side note: there's a portrayal of gay people here that feels both unneeded and uncomfortably homophobic.) The main annoyance here is that these jokes feel like complete cutaway gags to begin with, so they easily could have been cut out and nothing would be been lost. They instead could have focused on the more interesting character-driving parts, such as Rock's reality star wife and how his relationship is staged, and how that affects him as a person. There are clever celebrity cameos and in-jokes, and those work very well. It's just the beyond stupid stuff that drags the movie down. While Top Five does have its moments, ideas, and a solid amount of laughs, the film suffers from the same problems that its own protagonist is trying to overcome. People just need to know when stupid stuff works and when it doesn't, and here, it really works to its disadvantage. At least it tried some different things. 6.8/10, okay, one thumb (barely) up, (barely) above average, etc.