Chris Rock is a great standup yet to find a starring movie role. I’m not sure that this funny, if indulgent vehicle – with loads of A-list cameos called in as favours – brings him that much closer to the holy grail of a hit film, but it interestingly explores the idea that a hit film might be a false goal for a comic in any case. As in Adam Sandler’s Funny People (and indeed the Oscar-winning Birdman) we have a star, Andre Allen, played by Rock, who wants to put behind him a silly but hugely lucrative and popular franchise, and do some serious work: in this case, a solemn movie about the Haitian revolution. Gallingly, people are more interested in his upcoming wedding to a vacuous reality star, a situation which Allen accepts as a possible boost to career reinvention, and is undergoing an increasingly flirtatious interview with a smart, sensitive journalist – typecasting for Rosario Dawson. Rock is no actor, but he rides a wave of funny, self-aware and outrageous situations, and this is always watchable.
