In this presidential eleciton year, the reality of our system has truly become clear to me. I despise the current Administration, their policies and practices but for all that I want John Kerry to win I wonder how much difference he can make.
Head of State is Chris Rock’s satirical take on the subject and it’s funnier than I’d expected; in fact if there was anything else on that remotely interested me I’d have switched the channel. That would have been a mistake. Rock is a funny, funy man and I should have trusted him to not screw us with his first outing as director.
In a nutshell: Rock plays Mays Gilliam, an alderman in Washington, D.C., who’s essentially hit bottom. Elsewhere the Democratic candidate for president dies in a plane crash and no ‘eligible’ politician wants to stand against the Republicans’ man, Vice President Brian Lewis, a war hero and “Sharon Stone’s cousin.” That night Gilliam is in the news standing up for some nobody in a local dispute and comes to the attention of the right people who pick him as a sure loser who’ll do some good for the party nonetheless.
Of course you can’t keep someone like that in straightjacket and Gilliam, frustrated at parroting the same meaningless lines over and over, goes off script. Cinderella movies have to go up from bottom and that’s where Rock’s script takes off. Once he goes natural and populist everyone loves him, his poll numbers start to go somewhere and the other candidate starts getting nervous.
The high point, for me, is the debate between them. Lewis gives us standard political speechifying; he calls Gilliam an amateur and closes with his standard campaign tagline, “God bless America and no one else.” This is truly where Rock makes the clearest political commentary of the movie, lashing out at the professional’s hypocrisy and insulation from reality. Sure none of it is particularly original but the words hit home, resonate and made me laugh.
State isn’t perfect, Rock makes too much of his blackness and wastes a romantic subplot with a sweet hardworking girl (contrasted with Robin Givens’ running joke of an ex- who wants her suddenly good thing back).
recommended if you’re in the mood
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