Chris Rock is a very funny man. He is also an extremely talented actor as he proves in the role he wrote for himself in this, his third time behind the camera too. Rock plays Andre Allen a comedian who donned an animal suit to play a gun-toting sidekick to an LA cop as the star of ‘Hammy The Bear’ a blockbuster movie franchise that has brought him both fame and fortune. Now he wants to re-align his career and be recognized as a serious actor for a change. Unlike Michael Keaton’s character in ‘Birdman’ he doesn’t chose the Broadway Stage in his attempt to go ‘legit’ but instead he opts to direct/write/star in a movie called ‘Uprize!’ about the famous Haitian rebellion of 1791. In this story thousands of white people are slaughtered unmercifully, and now the movie faces a similar fate by the Critics in their extremely scathing reviews.‘Top Five’ starts with the opening weekend of ‘Uprize’ in movie theaters, and Allen’s pushy agent who is desperate to counterbalance the negative rants insists that Allen spend the whole day doing press interviews to at least try and get some favorable coverage for the struggling movie. He persuades Allen to allow a female reporter from the NY Times to trail him all day so that she write a profile piece of him. Its not an easy sell as that paper’s movie critic has written some very cutting and vitriolic opinions on Allen’s work in the past, but he warms to the idea when he meets the disarming Chelsea Brown who will be his shadow for the entire day.
They are also accompanied everywhere by a film crew as Allen is about to get married to a Bravo TV Reality Star in a wedding that is much more about ratings than about two people living happily ever after. Allen’s pretty controlling fiance is the one that helped him recover and get him sober after years of being a drunk, and so now he just goes along regardless with anything she wants. It turns out that when he and Chelsea actually start to bond during the day, its the one thing that they have in common as she has her 4 year chip too. As the two of them compare notes we learn their rather bizarre but totally hilarious stories of their drink-fueled pasts in a series of flashbacks.
One of the highlights of the day (and the movie) is when Allen pops in to see his ex-wife and several of his friends from his old pre-celeb days, and the banter is both warm and funny. This is also where the title of the movie stems from too as each of his cronies list their favorite top five hip-hop singers which subsequently everyone else feels the need to comment on and correct. This reunion also starts to make Allen dwell on the days when he first started out a stand up comedian and when life was so much simpler, and he realizes that his biggest fear is that he doesn’t think he is funny anymore now that he is sober.Both Allen and Chelsea Brown have their own rough patches as the day unfolds and they discover not only do they have a lot in common, but there is a strong mutual attraction between them. However just before they get to act upon it, Allen learns that Miss Brown has a secret which changes everything between, almost for good.
The extremely likable Rock and the talented Rosario Dawson who plays Chelsea Brown had a pitch-perfect chemistry together and she is more than just a great foil to this very funny man. As they spend the day mainly walking the streets of Manhattan their constant banter which starts off so guardedly, makes one think that Rock has named his character after the director he seems to have been influenced by with the whole look and feel of this movie.
Besides Ms Dawson, Rock has cast several of his friends in the many cameo rolls. Cedric The Entertainer is particularly wonderful as a rather disgusting lascivious promoter, a pre-accident Tracey Morgan plays an old friend, The View’s Sherri Shepard is Allen’s ex-wife, and a barely recognisable Ben Vereen is his father. He also has his ex SNL colleague Adam Sandler bantering with a very funny Jerry Sienfeld and Whoopi Goldberg all playing themselves in a comical scene at the end.
For Rock, after two mis-starts in the director’s chair,it looks like its a case of third time lucky, and unlike his character, he should never ever worry about being funny. He is one of the best.
