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Dylan live
The temperamental troubadour plays one more encore along the Never-ending Tour.
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Movie Review
"The General's Daughter"
John Travolta's dancing days are definitely over, but who knew his acting days were numbered, too?
By Andrew O'Hehir
[06/18/99]

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Chris Rock is the newest and biggest comic whose delivery alone spells Love. The people adore Chris Rock, who lately, because of the mysterious sorcery of fame, has become a lot larger than the sum of his parts. For many today, Rock represents the bright new personification of Hilarity Itself. Truly, his vocal inflections are so infused with wiggly delight, it almost doesn't matter what he says, which is good, because the "Chris Rock: Bigger and Blacker" tour (promoting his new HBO special of the same name, airing July 10) isn't especially funny. On paper, anyway, it's pretty bleak material. Rock still delivers the yucks, but mostly through whopping charisma and rude will.

Black comedians, particularly when performing for a predominantly black audience, are at some point faced with the rather unfunny task of talking about the fairly horrifying realities of being black in America. Richard Pryor (for me, stand-up comedy's poet laureate) tackled this with crazily inspired mimicry and insight. Eddie Murphy went about it with ruthless irreverence. Bill Cosby did it with gloss and denial, eschewing the grittier realities as well as he stayed away from the F-word. Chris Rock, new heavyweight champion, is outraged and desperate. He seems very upset about America, doubly upset about the black plight and ferociously upset to be the one who has to talk about it.

It comes across in his Screamin' Jay Hawkins vocal style, and the way he stalks the stage. His whole essence screams; his small, whippy frame is like a pain-absorbing spring mechanism that coils up to a certain pressure-point, then explodes back with a barrage of raspy barks through his alarmed-looking head. He needs to holler, and he's great at it, but the humor in this round of material doesn't quite outrun the roaring sadness that generated it. After an hour of Rock wringing and pacing and screaming, we still loved the guy, but we came away feeling scraped and reprimanded, and like we'd just seen someone forced to be a social conscience who really doesn't want to be a social conscience at all. It's almost as if Rock sees the situation as being so urgent that he doesn't have any choice.

"Bigger and Blacker" began with some new Rock riffs on being black in America, more of the same stuff that made his 1997 show "Roll with the New" a critical hit. It's a daring shtick that would get a white guy killed, but there's a moralistic, finger-wagging aspect to it as well. Mothers shouldn't be out nightclubbing while the kids are at home: "If you grow up calling your grandmother 'mommy' and your mother 'Pam,' you goin' to jail!" Dad should pay the bills and keep the lights on so the kids can do homework, etc. Rock discouraged homophobia: "Whoever you hate WILL end up in your family. If you're homophobic, you gonna have a gay son." He discussed the desperate need for new black leaders, describing everyone after Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. as "substitute teachers." Rock then delved vigorously into the kinds of issues he appeared to think an ideal black leader would address -- criticism of the NYPD, medical insurance, pharmaceutical corporations, the disparity between retail venues in white and black neighborhoods, etc. -- and stopped barely shy of preaching his show into a depressive coma, then put the cap on the whole rant by kicking up a big ruckus against the idea of his being a "role model," which in his mind is tantamount to being called a "good nigger." Before that line, which essentially expressed "I'm not your new black motherfucking leader" in so many words, he might have been running for governor, and might even have won.

All of this stuff was hardcore and true and brave and all. Was it comedy? Well, he's a wonderfully funny guy. But jeez, it mostly smarts.

Rock's funniest bits were the lightest, such as his fancy jig-dancing enthusiasm for the Ricky Martin hit "Livin' La Vida Loca," which he described as the "Whoomp! There It Is" crossover of Hispanic music. Again, you really had to be there.

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