Top Five

Opens Thurs., Dec. 11 at SIFF Cinema Egyptian and other theaters. 
Rated R. 101 minutes.

If Chris Rock’s movies were as good as his interviews, he’d be racking up year-end critics’ awards right about now. The comedian has been smart and funny—riffing on politics, race, and Hollywood—in his publicity marathon for Top Five, a starring vehicle he also wrote and directed. But at some point, the actual film has to open, and, well—too bad. This one is a marked advance over Rock’s previous directing fling, I Think I Love My Wife (2007), a stillborn remake of Eric Rohmer’s French New Wave classic Chloe in the Afternoon. But it’s much less savvy than his stand-up observations.

The story unfolds over the course of a long day in New York, as a once-popular comedian named Andre Allen (Rock) desperately promotes his new movie. He’s talking to a New York Times writer named Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson) throughout the day, a device that’s less about illuminating his character and more about highlighting their growing rapport. (Although one long slapstick recollection about a lost weekend in Houston keeps the movie 2014-level raunchy.) We learn that Andre is giving up comedy because he’s quit drinking; that he only wants to make serious films like his new project about the Haitian slave uprising; and that he’s less than passionate about his upcoming marriage to a reality-TV star (Gabrielle Union). It’s also really getting old that his furry trilogy about a police bear named Hammy is his biggest claim to fame. Something in him dies every time a fan shouts “It’s Hammy time!” in his direction.

Rock has gathered a batch of colleagues to contribute smallish roles, including Kevin Hart, Tracy Morgan, and Cedric the Entertainer. As for Rock’s performance, even playing opposite the lively Dawson doesn’t make him a more fluid actor. There’s nothing wrong with the idea of mixing comedy and Woody Allenesque introspection—I guess the comparison here is with Allen’s Stardust Memories, but that movie wasn’t especially strong, either. The “problems” that come with wealth and celebrity are a wobbly basis for comedy, despite the laughs scattered through Top Five. And when the jokes are given the hard-R down-and-dirty treatment (this is not a holiday movie to see with the whole family), it makes the experience that much more dispiriting.

film@seattleweekly.com