How is this so highly rated? I love Chris Rock and that's why I went to see it but I was so disappointed, if it hadn't had been raining I would have walked out.
Chris Rock doesn't seem to understand what the film is about. He is supposed to be playing a unfunny Black comedian reincarnated back into a white businessman who has just been bumped off by his wife and assistant. Even in a comedy you have to bring some sense of reality to make the humor work. His character doesn't change; he continues to act like a black guy, and not just any one but himself, Lance. Of course that's what you'd do your given a second chance, for no good reason other than heaven making an administrative error, and you use that most precious gift to continue acting in the same dumb way you did before. Why does heaven give him a second chance other than the weak plot demands it? Lance doesn't do anything special to deserve it in his previous life; he just seems to take it for granted he is entitled to it. He never listens to anyone else or any advice, he just talks over everyone in his own self centered pursuit of a woman he glimpsed ten minutes ago.
The point of view was all wrong, if it was supposed to be funny seeing a middle-aged white guy talking like a bad black comedian then that's what we should have seen on screen, not Rock except in very brief flashes. The reincarnated Lance shows no sense of having gone through the biggest change anyone can make other than changing sex. There is no awareness of his situation at all. We are supposed to despise the ruthless business man but Rock is an equally irritating replacement character with a different but just as selfish moronic single mindedness in getting the girl. The idea of a young attractive black girl being genuinely in love with a paunchy, balding and pretty ancient old man and kissing him passionately on screen would have just been stomach turning and I am at least glad Rock wouldn't let the cameras stray off him for that.
Rock just didn't do anything to make it work. He created an unsympathetic selfish character who acted oblivious to his own situation and the reactions of everyone around him. But worse, he just wasn't funny, which let's face it most of us had gone to see.
Chris Rock doesn't seem to understand what the film is about. He is supposed to be playing a unfunny Black comedian reincarnated back into a white businessman who has just been bumped off by his wife and assistant. Even in a comedy you have to bring some sense of reality to make the humor work. His character doesn't change; he continues to act like a black guy, and not just any one but himself, Lance. Of course that's what you'd do your given a second chance, for no good reason other than heaven making an administrative error, and you use that most precious gift to continue acting in the same dumb way you did before. Why does heaven give him a second chance other than the weak plot demands it? Lance doesn't do anything special to deserve it in his previous life; he just seems to take it for granted he is entitled to it. He never listens to anyone else or any advice, he just talks over everyone in his own self centered pursuit of a woman he glimpsed ten minutes ago.
The point of view was all wrong, if it was supposed to be funny seeing a middle-aged white guy talking like a bad black comedian then that's what we should have seen on screen, not Rock except in very brief flashes. The reincarnated Lance shows no sense of having gone through the biggest change anyone can make other than changing sex. There is no awareness of his situation at all. We are supposed to despise the ruthless business man but Rock is an equally irritating replacement character with a different but just as selfish moronic single mindedness in getting the girl. The idea of a young attractive black girl being genuinely in love with a paunchy, balding and pretty ancient old man and kissing him passionately on screen would have just been stomach turning and I am at least glad Rock wouldn't let the cameras stray off him for that.
Rock just didn't do anything to make it work. He created an unsympathetic selfish character who acted oblivious to his own situation and the reactions of everyone around him. But worse, he just wasn't funny, which let's face it most of us had gone to see.