‘Head of State’

Chris Rock delivers a typically tactless big-screen performance as the nation’s first African-American presidential candidate.   [PG-13]

By: Jay Boyar

Chris Rock (above with Tamala Jones, below with Bernie Mac) attempts to bring black power to the White House in Head of State, a film that gets laughs while redefining the term "negative campaigning."

   Post-9/11, and with the country at war, you don’t expect to see the White House blown to smithereens in the middle of a goofy comedy.
   But that’s what happens in Head of State, Chris Rock’s mostly lame farce about the first African-American presidential candidate.
   The White House is shown exploding in a negative campaign ad intended to suggest how disastrous it would be if Mays Gilliam, the public-spirited D.C. alderman played by Rock, were to become the prez.
   Considering the current climate, the scene is in poor taste. And while nothing else in Head of State is quite so inappropriate, it does indicate the film’s slapdash spirit.
   Rock, who co-wrote and directed Head of State, is a major-league standup comic. But as a filmmaker, he’s still in the minors, if not Little League.
   His movie is a collection of stale ideas (what if a political party wanted its candidate to lose?) and predictable plot twists that Rock and co-writer Ali LeRoi seem to forget about from time to time. That imaginary White House scene aside, the film is politically toothless. And what’s the point of making a comedy about the first black presidential candidate if you’re not going to use it as a springboard for something more sharply satirical than this picture’s bland, populist sentiments?
   About as pointed as this production gets is the scene — used endlessly in commercials — in which a group of white, well-dressed, mostly older partygoers dance hip-hop.
   Yes, the hip-hop style sequence has a laugh or two in it, as does the film as a whole. Mays’ opponent, for example, proudly bills himself as the current Vice President of the United States, a war hero and Sharon Stone’s cousin.
   It’s hard to explain why that line is funny, but it is. And yet these occasional amusing moments only make you wish that the rest of the film could live up to them.
   It doesn’t help that Rock’s performance is even more wooden than usual, or that Tamala Jones, as his love interest, has about as much pizzazz as cold oatmeal. Dylan Baker and Lynn Whitfield, as Mays’ advisers, are better but nothing special. Ditto Robin Givens as his delusional ex-fiancée and Nick Searcy as his opponent.
   Bernie Mac (TV’s The Bernie Mac Show), who plays Mays’ bail-bondsman big brother, has a commanding physical presence that goes along with the character’s unwavering confidence in his own scrambled logic. The audience’s energy level seems to rise whenever he’s on screen.
   A lot more Mac might have saved Head of State — more Mac and a little more tact.
   For the foreseeable future, it’s probably a good policy for comedies to avoid blowing up major American landmarks.
Rated PG-13. Contains language, some sexuality and drug references.
   Jay Boyar is the movie critic of the Orlando Sentinel. Copyright 2003 by Orlando Sentinel Communications. All Rights Reserved.