Toronto Report: Chris Rock Takes Manhattan in 'Top Five'

It’d be hard to cobble together a decent highlight reel for Chris Rock’s filmmaking career: With the exception of the wittily inquisitive 2009 doc Good Hair, which Rock produced, his behind-the-scenes IMDB credits include two so-so Rock-directed comedies — Head of State and I Think I Love My Wife — that failed to capture his precise and profound style of stand-up.

But Rock’s latest effort, Top Five, is his most personal yet — and, as a result, his most satisfying, as evidenced by the audience reaction during Saturday’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Clearly indebted to Rock’s idol, Woody Allen, but also of a piece with such night-crawling NYC classics as After Hours and The 25th Hour, Rock’s latest casts him as Andre Allen, a standup-turned-shlock-merchant itching to be taken seriously. On the opening day of his newest and most dramatic film, Andre nervously travels around New York City, where he’s tailed by an eager New York Times reporter, Chelsea (played by a chatty, charming Rosario Dawson).

As Andre cruises the city, he and Chelsea discuss everything from addiction to adulation to hip-hop history, making for plenty of satisfying Rock N’ Talks (not to be confused with the Hawke N’ Talk). There’s a loosey-goosey feel to Top Five, especially in the scenes that find Andre mingling with friends and family; one sequence, in which he visits a group of old pals devolves into a series of hilarious riffs and put-downs.

Not every joke here lands, and there are a few tonal tremors throughout, but Top Five is brisk enough that you quickly shrug things off and, like Allen, keep cruising along (it helps, too, that Rock has assembled a buoyant supporting cast, including Tracy Morgan, J.B. Smoove, and a third-act musical-guest cameo too uproarious to spoil here).

Premiere crowds are notoriously bad barometers of how a movie will play to the general public — the excitement of being in the same room as a bunch of stars tends to get audiences keyed up beyond all reason — but the loud, drowning roars at Top Five's Saturday-night screening were convincingly deep. Expect to see Top Five on a few Top 10 lists by the end of the year.