Rock bottom

The oeuvre of Chris Rock may not be fully known in this parish. He was the African-American stand-up who made a packet out of saying the unsayable about race. Richard Pryor kicked down the door, but it was Rock who stamped a registered trademark on the N-word. He also had a rapper’s sensibility in the area of gender politics: his breakthrough set had much to say about — and I merely quote — dick and pussy.

And what about the movies? For children, Rock voiced a jive-talking zebra in the Madagascar mega-franchise, perhaps a quadrupedal hommage to Eddie Murphy’s donkey in Shrek. Alas Rock’s own pet projects have a tendency to misfire. Head of State posited the cockamamie notion of a black dude running for POTUS and winning. Weirdly, that did actually come to pass so next time round Rock dreamed up something even more outlandish. I Think I Love My Wife was a sex comedy adapted — and yes, you really are about to read this next bit — from un film d’Eric Rohmer. It was sort of Bill Cosby meets the nouvelle vague meets the remainder bin at Blockbuster. Imagine, if it had been a hit they’d all have been scavenging the Euro-canon for badass Hollywood remakes. We’d have had Jules et Jim et J-Lo, or A Short Film about Terminating. Maybe Closely Observed Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

But here comes Top Five, in which Rock is on safer ground. He plays Andre Allen, a former stand-up comedian who has voiced a jive-talking bear in a mega-franchise and now wants to make his own movies. OK, so the script sounds as though it was written on tracing paper, but cunningly Rock has also made some stuff up. Andre is a recovering alcoholic who was persuaded off the sauce by his fiancée, a Kardashianesque gargoyle whose every move is shot and reshot for her own reality TV show.