Underrated

Having been a fan of Chris Rock's earlier films before 'Top Five' (which I actually found to be overrated), I'm still baffled by the fact that critics and many filmgoers gave this film no love. It's actually a clever political satire much in the vein of 'Duck Soup' or 'Bananas,' and the whole point of the film wasn't to show that electing a black man will suddenly make the country a better place.

Mays Gilliam is the ultimate fool--undereducated, ignorant, overly embracive of the worst parts of black culture. You really have to be a racist bigot to believe that this is the kind of presidency that black people would actually want. Chris Rock (who is actually highly intelligent and educated if you watch any of his stand-up specials) even said this in an IGN interview: "I think we will eventually have an African-American president. I don't think it will be a big difference than any of the other presidents. I mean, whoever the African-American who is president will probably run as just a normal guy. He's going to run like everybody else. He's not going to get in saying, 'I'm going to do things black.' It's probably easier to have an African-American who tows the party line, than having a white guy who talks like Mays Gilliam, probably." (http://www.ign.com/articles/2003/03/28/an-interview-with-chris-rock)

...Thus what makes the concept of a lowly-educated and over-the-top black president running for office hilarious in this movie.

I think if people were less racist and actually had a sense of humor, they'd see that there's a lot of comedy in all of Chris Rock's films pre-'Top Five' that transgresses what some call 'racial' humor. But unfortunately I still feel there's a lot of undeserved hate for Rock's earlier films, where he was trying to make people laugh with silly, inventive plots instead of pandering to people's sappy expectations for autobiographical comedy as he did with 'Top Five.'