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DAVE CHAPPELLE'S BLOCK PARTY A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2006 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
DAVE CHAPPELLE'S BLOCK PARTY is a surprisingly upbeat and good spirited documentary about a rap music party. Given rap's angry and obscene lyrics, the movie is amazingly genteel. But except for fans of this music genre, I can see nothing compelling in this documentary to suggest any wide appeal. I wish I had been at Woodstock, but I'm not the least bit disappointed that I wasn't one of the seventeen token whites that Dave Chappelle invited to be among the five thousand blacks that he asked to his block party in Brooklyn. Don't get me wrong. I've liked movies about music I've never liked, with HYPE! and PINK FLOYD: THE WALL being two good examples. But being harmless, as DAVE CHAPPELLE'S BLOCK PARTY is, isn't the same thing as being good.
The movie starts three days before the concert in September of 2004. In the Ohio town where Chappelle lives, he gives out tickets to the concert, which includes a bus ride to get there. He even gets an all black band from the local college to come and march into the party. Typical of the humor is an episode in which he goes to a white woman's house in order to help her figure out what she should wear to a rap concert. It is clear that the locals all adore Chappelle, and he has an easy and instant rapport with everyone he meets on the street there.
But most of the concertgoers come from the Brooklyn area. The film intersperses complete rap songs, along with some hip hop, with lots of background story. Chappelle, for example, takes us into the daycare center whose roof he will use as his headquarters during the party. We see him hamming it up with the kids and racing a boy down the block in a footrace.
Some of the jokes are raunchy, but many are fairly innocuous. The film stays clear of politics except for two incidents. One long song claims that everyone in prison should be freed since they are all political prisoners. No mention is made of the helpless and frequently dead victims. And, in another incident, a rapper asks the college kids what they would do if they were president. They would immediately end the war and have the government give the students more money.
About two times too long, the movie eventually ends and the songs stop. But not nearly soon enough. At one point Chappelle says, talking about his skills as both a comedian and a musician, "I'm mediocre at both and yet have managed to talk my way into a fortune." I agree. This movie proves his point perfectly.
DAVE CHAPPELLE'S BLOCK PARTY runs 1:40. It is rated R for "language" and would be acceptable for teenagers.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, March 3, 2006. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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