Head of State Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)March 27th, 2003
HEAD OF STATE
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2003 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
HEAD OF STATE is Chris Rock, who directs, co-writes and stars in this high concept comedy of a black alderman who is picked by the Democratic Party to replace a presidential candidate who dies on the campaign trail. Putting the slap back in slapstick, the movie is a mess, albeit sporadically a likable and funny one. Although the film is frequently quite racially offensive, Rock's demeanor is so charming that it's relatively easy to let its racism pass without getting too riled. Typical of the jokes is one about a brand of malt liquor, made by and marketed to blacks with the name of Crib Malt Liquor. The joke is that the bottles really do come with baby nipples rather than bottle caps. You're not laughing?
Rock plays a nobody named Mays Gilliam who is chosen to be the losing candidate in the presidential race so that the Democrats can get brownie points with the minority groups and then use their votes to win in the subsequent presidential race. The first poll against Gilliam's Republican challenger, Vice President Lewis (Nick Searcy), has Gilliam down by eighty-two percentage points. Lewis, whose claim to fame is that he was a war hero and is Sharon Stone's cousin, has a catchy campaign motto: "God Bless America: And No One Else!"
Gilliam's character suffers from a bad case of multiple personalities. Sometimes he's a sweetheart, and other times he's pretty cruel. Sometimes he's a pansy, and other times he's a hard-nosed politician with a demagogue's penchant for cheap populism. And still other times, he's like the kindest next-door neighbor that you could ever dream of. The script doesn't give his character much of an arc, allowing him to flounder between states. The result is that you never know if you're supposed to cheer for him, laugh at him, feel sorry for him or resent his passive-aggressive racial bigotry.
When he isn't slapping someone, Bernie Mac plays a consistently funny character named Mitch. Mitch is a bail bondsman, who brags, "Business is great! Thank God for crime!" After Mitch becomes his brother's running mate, Mitch's talk show interviews, full of "Alice in Wonderland" style double-talk, are
priceless.
Most of the jokes in HEAD OF STATE fall flat, but, every time you start to give up on the picture, it throws some delicious little zinger at you. My favorite was the Democrat's new answer to their sex scandals. They have recruited and trained a group of "super whores" who are available twenty-four hours a day to their candidate. They even show these crosses between WWE divas and CHARLIE'S ANGELS at their special boot camp. I'm still not exactly sure how learning to crawl under barbed wire in the mud helps in training a professional sex worker, but the possibilities are endless.
HEAD OF STATE runs 1:35. It is rated PG-13 for "language, some sexuality and drug references" and would be acceptable for teenagers.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, March 28, 2003. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC and the Century theaters.
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