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83Rock and Mac exult in the kind of highly charged verbal and physical antics that are star-turn rewards for performers currently at the tops of their games.
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80Chris Rock gets to direct himself, and as a result is finally starring in a laugh-out-loud funny movie.
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75An imperfect movie, but not a boring one and not lacking in intelligence.
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70Not the sharpest political humor I've ever heard, but it gets my vote for the stupidest fun I've had in a long time.
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70The gags come fast and furious, and though some are a little stale, Rock and cowriter Ali LeRoi strive for wit over crudity.
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67When Rock hits he's dangerously funny. If he didn't try so hard to be liked, he'd be even more dangerous.
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63The key term here is "fairy tale," because, although the movie occasionally tries for dramatic moments, they're overplayed, undercooked, and divorced from reality.
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63In Head of State, Rock may be verging on becoming a heart-warmer.
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60This is silliness of such a special grade, performed with such zest, that it makes you forgive and even forget the movie's foolishness and borderline incoherence.
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50Doesn't seem directed at all; you half expect the actors to crash into each other. Still, give me the attempted satire of Head of State over the racial stereotyping of "Bringing Down the House" anyday. You can feel a mind at work when you watch Rock.
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50I'd like Head of State better if it had less cartoonish violence, and if its gags weren't so predictable. Rock is in fine comic form, though, and his directing debut shows real promise.
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50Right now, this goofy film is the best candidate for mindless, enjoyable laughs.
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50A tepid amalgam of other, similarly themed movies.
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50Pleasing and occasionally very funny movie that maintains a mild but consistent hold on its audience.
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50Chris Rock was busy directing, producing, co-writing and starring in this light comedy. Given his hilarious stand-up routines, one wishes he had spent a little more time on the script.
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50Gets better -- more rambunctiously astute -- as it goes, and its comic engine sputters into fitful life when Bernie Mac arrives on the scene.
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50You can see Rock hedging his bets right from the opening frames.
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50After all is said and done, it seems like the jokes during the end credits are the tow truck of the movie, the engine quitting after the halfway point.
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50Offers a smattering of big laughs and an overall tone of ramshackle likability, but considering Rock's talent and the film's potential for smart satire, Head Of State registers as a somewhat wasted opportunity.
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50Rock can't set up a decent-looking shot, and he doesn't care about niceties such as character development and all that narrative downtime in between jokes. But he nonetheless wrings biting humor from serious issues with the sort of ferocity that made Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce men of respect as well as comedy.
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40Toothless satire punctuated by the occasional biting gag.
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40Pandering, stiffly acted and brimming with awkward (if progressive) political posturing, Rock's films attempt to filter old Hollywood formula through a hip-hop sensibility.
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40Shows Rock suffering from premature Robin Williams syndrome. He's yet to express the full ferocity of his comic talent on the screen and he's already doing penance by going for the warm and fuzzy.
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40So beneath the considerable talents of its star, Chris Rock, it's dismaying to note Rock is also the movie's director, producer and co-scenarist. Not unlike Richard Pryor a generation ago, Rock has yet to land a movie vehicle that captures the sparky energy and subversive bent of his excellent stand-up performances.
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38The difference between Head of State and a good comedy is like the difference between Chris Rock and a real actor.
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38Satire's funniest when it's true, but Rock exaggerates and mistimes too many jokes.
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Opens with a statement that Hillary Clinton, Bob Dole and Al Sharpton are not in the movie. Also not in the movie: laughs.
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30There’s only the faintest glimmer of Rock’s talent for piercingly funny humor here, a shortcoming for which the comic can only blame himself, given that he also produced and directed the movie.
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30The very confusion that has made him (Rock) so unpredictable and funny onstage makes this on-screen exploration of contemporary racial mythologies curiously tentative and unfocused.
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30Though the comedy falls short of a debacle -- which is what such egocentric projects tend to be -- it isn't as sharp, fast or funny as Rock's stand-up routines.
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25The sloppily shot, crudely edited Head of State fails as satire, for starters, because of its utter disconnect from any kind of reality.
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20An excruciatingly amateurish production.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 7 out of 16
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Mixed: 2 out of 16
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Negative: 7 out of 16
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OscarR.10this movie desrves the red carplet not a 44, shame on the reviewers and users.
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[Anonymous]10Funny and gut busting from start to finish. politically brilliant as well.
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MarkD.10