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Still via Paramount Pictures/YouTube
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Even funnier than you expect it to be, which is saying something.
The comic centerpiece of Chris Rock’s extremely enjoyable Top Five
is a sequence in which Andre Allen, the famous comedian played by Rock,
takes journalist Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson) to the housing project
where he grew up. (She’s writing a profile for the New York Times.)
Back in Andre’s old neighborhood, Chelsea meets the friends and family
Andre has known forever, and these old acquaintances are played by a
murderer’s row of comic talent: Tracy Morgan, Leslie Jones, Jay Pharaoh, Michael Che, Sherri Shepherd, Hassan Johnson (aka Wee-Bey). Pharoah has said that Rock “put out a comedian’s signal in the sky like Batman”
when casting the movie, which also features JB Smoove, Jerry Seinfeld,
Brian Regan, and other great stand-ups. But what’s remarkable about the
scene in the projects is not just how many funny people are assembled.
It’s that, even given that collection of talent, the scene is even funnier than you to expect it to be. It’s more than the sum of its parts. It’s a blast.
The comics rib each other, explain themselves to the interloping
journalist, and argue about the best rappers of all time (the “top five”
of the title). Rock, directing his third feature film and allowing much
more improvisation than he has in the previous two, orchestrates the
scene expertly. Here and elsewhere, Top Five has a jaunty
rhythm, credit for which goes not only to Rock—and executive music
producer Questlove, who’s partly behind the pitch-perfect pop-music
choices that keep the movie humming—but also editor Anne McCabe, who cut both of Kenneth Lonergan’s movies (among many others).
Rock has compared his performance in the projects scene to Double
Dutch, him trying to find his way in as the jokes keep swinging by. It’s
a metaphor he likes. At another point in Top Five, we see
snippets of Andre and Chelsea walking and talking around New York City,
including a shot, returned to multiple times, of Andre trying to find
his moment to jump as two girls swing ropes by a playground. He never
does. Chelsea leaps right in.
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