Rock: Top Five (2014)

As digital media has blurred the distinctions between shortform and longform cinema more and more, comedians have found more and more niches between standup and narrative-driven entertainment, from the loose, variable-length standup of Louie, to the short-film sketch format of Inside Amy Schumer, to the post-standup ambience of a film like Obvious Child. In some ways, Chris Rock’s magnum opus Top Five tries to tell the story of that moment, or is more able to tell a traditional story about that moment, just because Rock belongs to the previous comic generation, coming to terms with this new world rather than being reared on it. Set over a single day in New York, the film, which was written and directed by Rock, sees him as Andre Allen, a washed-up standup who, after releasing a series of Martin Lawrence-esque blockbusters, opts for a think piece about the Haitian Uprising in order to win back some credibility. In a daring move, the film takes place more or less as a single conversation, opening with an interview between Andre and New York Times reporter Chelsea Brown, played by Rosario Dawson, that evolves and elasticises until they’re traversed nearly all of Manhattan by the time the film reaches its spine-tingling final shot. As that might suggest, part of the film’s project is for Rock to try and translate his spitfire standup into dialogue, something he’s never really pulled off before, but which he absolutely nails here, gathering all his peculiar tics and mannerisms into a uniquely African-American brand of screwball, which is just as anxious to come to terms with this new expansion of media universe as the first great wave of screwball films were in the 30s. At the same time, the fact that the film was produced by Kanye and Jay-Z, with a score curated by ?uestlove, is no coincidence either, since it’s hard to think of a film in which the give and take of hip-hop is translated so beautifully into conversation, limpidly ebbing and flowing as Andre and Chelsea, both recovering alcoholics, come dangerously close to the next bar, bottle or bottle shop, but always pull away at just the last minute. That’s not to say, either, that Rock’s stand-up persona is absent, but that’s it’s integrated so seamlessly into this character’s life and personality that, when he does finally return to the stage for a surprise spot at Comedy Cellar, there’s an emotional and cathartic kernel you never really sensed before, even or especially because that discrete distinction between his stand-up and film selves is so dissolved by this point. In its own way, then, it’s very much a vision of post-cinematic New York – Andre and Rosario never get around to discussing his film – which is perhaps why it has such a classy, boutique, uptown kind of feel, even when we return to Andre’s home in Harlem. At one level, it’s a way of making the day feel contoured by that final New York Times piece, but it also casts the entire film in a kind of distended limelight – there are lots of Chaplin references and an amazing cameo in which DMX sings “Smile” to a cell of incredulous inmates – that makes it feel like an elegy for both stand-up and comedy film as separate entities, while also quizzical enough about what might lie beyond them to win Rock a whole new host of loyal fans.