DEAD FUNNY (Down to Earth (DVD))

Member Name: snappy

Product:	Down to Earth (DVD)
Date:	20/06/01 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: virtuoso performance from Chris Rock

Disadvantages: a bit TOO Much like Heaven Can Wait

Comedian Chris Rock carries this film on his back, with a stream of gags that will have you falling about. ‘Down to Earth’ is a good fun film that is worth watching if you are looking for an antidote to a Blockbuster.

If you’ve seen the 1978 film ‘Heaven Can Wait’ starring Warren Beattie and Julie Christie you will recognise much of this film.

Billed as a re-make, it is probably one of the closest re-makes I’ve ever seen. Whereas Beattie was a Gridiron football star who was ‘taken too early’ and has to be returned to the living in another’s body – in this version Chris Rock is a black wannabe stand-up comic, Lance Barton. But the similarities are uncanny, despite this being a film played much more for laughs than the original.

Anyway, if you’ve seen HCW you will know the twists and the ending – nothing has changed, just the names and the faces. The plot transposed to a showbiz theme is the same.

Right, having said that, it is a funny film. Chris Rock is outstanding as he wisecracks his way through the film. It is a virtuoso performance and reminiscent of early Eddie Murphy outings (that’s pre Doolittle and Fat Professor movies!). He is aided and abetted by an actor familiar to anyone who has seen ‘American Pie’ – Eugene Levy (Jim‘s father in AP) plays ‘Keyes’ the angel who screwed up and took Lance too soon. Chazz Palminteri – neither a name nor a face I recognise from other films, is ‘King’, basically Keyes’ boss and God’s right hand man – a kind of St Peter figure. It is he who finds Lance a new body. This time it is multi millionaire and all around a**hole, Charles Wellington who dies, but before he is discovered, Lance can take over his body. We can see Lance as Wellington, but the joke is – everyone else just sees Wellington – a fat, grey haired 50 something.
r>Remember that, when you see Lance getting ‘down and dirty’ in his car to hip hop sounds and greeting fellow ‘brothers’ on the street in kind. “But hey – you’re a rich old whitey”, says the look on their faces.

And Lance has two more problems. OK So he is RICH, but he wants to win a spot on a All Black talent show, the last ever at the famous ‘Apollo’ club – not easy if you look like Charles Wellington. Lance/Charles buys a comedy club so he can practice. So that side of things begins to go well, but what of his other ‘problem’?

In his days as Lance – before his untimely death – he dated Sontee (Regina King), now she waltzes into his office, handcuffs herself to his desk and wants some action about a Hospital that Wellington owns and will not allow the poor to use. Lance/Charles does the right thing, impressing Sontee along the way and (this is where the film does seem very silly) starts to try to seduce her. Well •a) Wellington is married, albeit to a wife who tried to kill him and is having an affair with his P.A and • b) like I said, he is old, grey haired, fat and white. Sorry, it just does not ring true that he could woo Sontee. And their first kiss is well… yeeuk.

Anyway, I’ll reveal no more of what goes on, but like I said, if you’ve seen ‘Heaven Can Wait’ you will know what happens.

This film also gives an outing – and a successful one at that – to Brit actor Mark Addy. So good in ‘Full Monty’ and so pants – just like the film, in ‘Flintstones in Vegas’. Addy plays ‘Cisco’, Wellington’s Butler. He’s got an upper class English accent, till Lance rumbles his game and discovers he’s a New Yorker like him. They pal up and the sight of the two of them dancing to rap and hip-hop is dead funny.

Did I say ‘Dead Fu
nny’ – well that’s this film. Give it a chance