Review of Top Five (2014) by Aaron M — 04 Jan 2015

I'm going to go against the grain here; I didn't care for 'Top Five'. Contrary to all the rave reviews for how funny it was and how deep and soulful the plot turned out to be, it just never clicked with me bar a few smirks and half-cracked smiles. I can absolutely say all the funny stuff were in the previews.

The funniest parts of the movie were when Rock's character was actually removed from all the typical plot devices these movies fall into. The small 5 minutes we got of his standup in the famed Comedy Cellar in New York were some of the funnest takes of the entire film. For me, it never felt like there was a beginning or end to this either. We jump right into him already on the interview with Dawson's character from the start and finish with everything pretty much left up in the air. Sure the implication is there for how it's probably going to end all happily ever after, but I felt like the audience deserved to see it happen on screen.

The bouncing back and forth from flashbacks to the present had me all disjointed. Some of the cameos were positive. Most of them were negative. Negative as in boring and unfunny and wasteful.

Rock has never been the best in front of the camera. You could probably assume some of the things that happened in the movie are a small hyperbole for his real life, but even when things started to get serious, it seemed campy. The entire premise of the top five held no substance.