By Claude Mills, Staff Reporter
Chris Rock and Tamala Jones in a scene from the movie 'Head Of State'. - Contributed
THE NEW movie, Head of State, is a rock of a movie a rapidly sinking boulder somewhere deep in a trench in the Pacific Ocean.
The movie is based on the premise of a party which actually wants its candidate to lose. The candidate in question is small-potato Washington D.C. alderman 'Mays Gilliam' (Chris Rock) who is brought in at the last minute after the original candidates die when their planes collide mid-air so that the backroom power brokers can bank easy minority loyalty for a future election while losing this one.
Robert Redford represented the daring Hollywood notion of a liberal idealist set up to lose a senatorial election in The Candidate. This one does that notion scant justice.
I enjoyed only 10 minutes of this movie, the rest of it was decidedly fast-forward material, the kind of movie I would not shell out $350 to see, even at gunpoint. Oh, for a remote! If I only had a remote!
FORCED TO SQUIRM
At times, I was forced to squirm in my seat at the sheer number of corny gags, listless race jokes, and boring, been-there-done-that concepts. Gimme a break! The concept of white folks dancing the electric slide to hip hop is a bit hackneyed, and it was last funny somewhere around 1823.
Still, there are a few zingers, and genuine knee-slappers in the movie, but interestingly, this is when Bernie Mac in on-screen. He has a magnetic presence, and his fast-talking repartee will have you in stitches, especially as he goes head-to-head with interviewers. For instance, when asked to comment on NATO, Mac says he will not comment on anyone behind his back.
Not even Rock's invitingly improvised personal cinematic style can rescue a bad script or mask his bad acting. Some of his funnier moments occur after Mays' older brother, Mitch (Bernie Mac) gives him a pep talk. Mays then ditches his teleprompter, and his red-white-and-blue ties for a 'this @#$% ain't right' speech that jabs at the status quo, and is one of this film's best moments.
After that, Mays dresses in ghettofabulous suits, hits gay bars, and pimp joints to bring them his new 'that-ain't-right' message. And he then causes the party it is not clear which Unites States (U.S.) political party it is but you can make your own guesses some jitters when he suddenly leaps from nine pecentage points to 24 within four weeks of the election.
GUTTER TACTICS
The opposition, Brian Lewis (Nick Searcy) a candidate who feels he deserves to win because he's not only a war hero but also Sharon Stone's cousin (a line repeated ad nauseum) also feels some consternation, and in a tribute to the threat, begins to run negative ads: 'Mays Gilliam: He's for cancer!'. This bit works a little because it is a commentary on the gutter tactics that so often characterise political campaigns in the U.S.
All this sets up a predictable conclusion, spurning the opportunity to produce a sharply critical yet funny film in the vein of a Bulworth.
The script in a word sucks. It waffles between being politically sensible and being outrageously funny, and in the end tries to do too much, and comes off feeling forced and contrived.
Where is the biting satire? Where is the blood? Where is the fury and the outrage? This is one of the weakest Rock movies of all time.
Robin Givens (formerly of the hit sitcom Head of the Class) does her career a disservice by playing a harpy girlfriend of Rock in this 'classic'.
Rock is one of the most astute comedians working today, and despite the fact that the movie opened number one in the box office, he laid an egg with this one. And although he gets stuffy white folks on their feet to shake their groove things to Nelly's Hot in Herre at a fund-raiser, movie-goers won't be laughing in the aisles in this one they will be too busy yawning.
