There’s a soul to this film that makes you care. It longs to make you laugh, fill up with joy, like a loving parent holding you up to an apple tree. There are also places where its darker than others, places that make you look away. Yet there’s always a feeling there, a story behind it all that makes it beautiful. “Top Five” has that kind of story and I loved it.
A comedian, who doesn’t feel like making jokes anymore and thinks it’s odd for a grown woman to still be into Cinderella, reluctantly takes up an interview offer by Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson) of the New York Times to follow him around through the day and ask him about those things he has never told anyone else. “How come you’re not funny anymore?”.
It’s a comedy! But to bill this film as a comedian in front of a mic would just be ignorant of the audience that hasn’t shown up. There’s a darker message to the film about the life of stardom, broken loves, sobriety, and realizing there are some things that you are just better off not doing.
Its written, directed and starred by Chris Rock, who plays our comedian, Andre Allen. It’s his third feature, and while I haven’t seen the others in his collection, I have seen his comedy stand ups. They were funny too. In this film, however, he’s a bit different. You’d think he’d be the star of the show, making all the jokes, and hitting all the punch-lines, yet his acting is restrained. He lets his spotlight fall on those around him, who bring the environment to life.
There’s this scene in the film where Andre brings Chelsea to a little apartment in New York City to introduce her to his folk; Fred (Tracy Morgan), Vanessa (Sheri Shepard), and Lisa (Leslie Jones). Here they all are laughing, eating fried chicken, bashing on each other with the kind of jokes that only a family who know each-other well can make, and sharing their own personal top five. As you go into the scene you suddenly feel like you know the place and could spend an afternoon with these people. But in it you can also see the loss of these afternoons in Andre. This was one of the few moments where the man with the serious and restrained face laughed and told the jokes he thought he couldn’t tell.
What I loved most about “Top Five” was the walks through New York City that Allen and Chelsea had. They formed a bond that made me smile. There is so much life to “Top Five”, so much it has to say, yet all the while it still stays true to knocking you out of your seat laughing. Nothing is held back in this film, like in his stand-ups, Chris says what he wants to say. I liked hearing what he had to say, it was entertaining, funny and thoughtful. Even though the film is only traveling through a day, every moment in it seems to be a collection of breaths come together to breath in more understanding to the grand scale of things. I laughed at the jokes and loved its rigorous honesty.
