Chris Rock’s new stand-up special Kill The Messenger is a puzzling disappointment.
The HBO special is assembled from live performances on three continents – Johannesburg, South Africa; London, England; and New York, New York. Rock’s production company has thrown tradition and continuity out the window by attempting to seamlessly splice together performances from all three locations into one cohesive whole. Sentences that start in Johannesburg finish in London. Punchlines that start in London are delivered in South Africa with a repetitive echo in New York to drive the point home.
It’s impossible to say why the production company chose this approach. Were they unable to get a full, satisfactory perfomance in any single location? Did unforseen technical issues destroy some tapes? Could it be an avant-garde stylistic decision? Whatever the reason, the execution is startlingly poor and fatally undercuts Rock’s shrill performance.
The first time the show jumps mid-sentence from one continent to another, the timing of the dialogue edit is flawless; unfortunately that only makes the sudden jump of wardrobe, lighting, and audio presence even more jarring. One of the cardinal rules of editing for performance is to never make an edit that calls attention to itself. A corollary to that rule would be that if you’re going to make an edit noticeable, you swing for the fences. Anything less than total commitment is going to feel like a mistake. It’s common practice to assemble a concert film from multiple performances across multiple nights. This feeble multi-city approach is the worst kind of aesthetic decision because it a) calls undue attention to itself, and b) measurably detracts from the subject.
The audio in all three concert halls has a jarringly different ambience, and the video from the New York City performance has the high-shine, poor contrast look of old video cameras. It’s almost painfully apparent that this production wasn’t originally designed as a 3-location montage, which makes the awkwardness even more evident.
Worst of all, the jumping locations undercuts Rock’s strength as a performer. Marquee comedy like this isn’t a weekend comedy club performance, in many ways, it’s live theater at its finest. Rock is a dedicated comedian, who could have spent a year or two honing the material for Kill The Messenger. This is a performance as polished as anything on Broadway. Needlessly leaping through time and space, changing inconsequential elements like audio reverb and wardrobe, fractures any kind of performance continuity.
Rock is a strong presence, constantly prowling the stage, contorting his face into a shrill rictus, and controlling the audience’s focus, but the inconsistent mix-and-mash performances become unsettling as the show progresses. His discipline and skill as a performer becomes evident, as the leaps across location show us how polished and rehearsed his performance is. However, the translocating robs us from seeing one continuous performance. Part of the intense, peculiar magic of stand-up comedy is that it’s dangerous. It’s one man on a stage without a safety net. Puncturing that illusion fatally wounds the comic energy, and it’s unforgiveable that every time the show jumps across the globe, you’re left asking “why?”
It’s a small blessing, then, that the material of Kill The Messenger is his weakest stand-up outing yet. Rock is becoming a voice without a message. The ferocity of his breakthrough special Bring The Pain is still present, but the relevance has faded. Much of the race- and gender- based humor here feels like leftover material from Bring The Pain and much of the topical McPalin/O’Biden humor is too perfunctory. Rock is a funnier and harder-working comedian than almost anyone else headlining today, but he’s like a fire running out of fuel. Does Rock feel trapped by his prior success? Or does he have nothing else to say?
A lot of his material this time out settles for easy punchlines instead of pushing into new ground. His opening bit about being tracked like a wild animal starts like a Borscht belt routine, then leaves a lot of ground unturned. The punchline involves Rock on a safari, being photographed by white people also on safari. There’s a moment of ambiguity, an implication that the bush-guides are tracking Rock himself like a jungle papparazzi, before the joke collapses onto the old black people vs. white people stereotypes. It’s lazy humor, not only because finding black people in South Africa isn’t so hard as to require a safari guide, but because Rock pulls himself out of the line of fire. How much more interesting could the material have been, had Rock turned on the savage nature of papparazzi photographers, or the disparities of his own fame?
The highlights of the material are the truest bits. Rock talking about the differences between having a job and a career, his early job washing dishes at a Red Lobster, and the racial makeup of his neighborhood are hilarious. Unfortunately, he pulls himself out of the spotlight too quickly, in order to fall back into jokes of racial stereotypes and gender differences.
Artists cannot succeed if they keep repeating themselves, and Rock is going to have to break new ground if he’s going to stay relevant. His success as an outspoken black man has had to change his life in unmeasurable ways. Much like Metallica can’t keep manufacturing outrage now that they’re multi-millionaires, Rock can’t stay relevant by wallowing in the indignities of racism. Kill The Messenger isn’t a career-ender. It’s a testament to Rock’s gifts as a stand-up performer that it won’t damage his headlining status, nor the impression that he’s the current champion of comic outrage.
Audiences first flocked to him for his vision; like all great stand up comics, he rose to fame showing us a world that’s right in front of us that nobody else could see. Rock’s success has lifted him to a new vantage point now, and if he can’t start showing us what he’s seeing from up there, we’ll shortly start to tire of him telling us what he saw five years ago.
This is a fantastic review and spot on. The only observation missing, I believe, is that Rock moves into an area of crude sexual humor, which no longer distinguishes him from so many other comics out there, and is not his forte.
I enjoyed reading this review and although I haven’t watched the HBO special, I did get to watch Chris Rock’s live performance in January 2008 at the Hippodrome in London. The few short clips of the HBO special that I have watched on YouTube do confirm the awkward effect of the editing and support your view that the production was not intended as a 3-location montage.
During the live show in London, it became quickly apparent that Chris Rock was getting the biggest laughs for his jokes on gender differences, marriage, and politics. The responses to his racial jokes were mixed with most of the laughs coming from the Afro-Caribbean members of the audience while the majority white viewers were at times uncomfortable and mostly silent.
In his past HBO specials, Chris Rock has been most effective in his critical observations of race-relations in America and his audiences have responded well because race-relations have become a common feature in America’s pop culture. Not so in the rest of the world and especially in Europe where sports fans in places like soccer-mad Spain still throw bananas at elite black soccer players. And yet most Europeans pride themselves in not being racist and consider talking about race to be taboo.
It is entirely possible that given these early responses to his racial humor abroad (his January 2008 performance in London was the start of his first international tour), Chris Rock may have tinkered with some of his material in order to give performances that would resonate with a more global audience which is what ended up on the HBO special based on shows he did much later in the year.
In TV interviews he did to promote the HBO special, Chris Rock alluded to the international audience he had tapped into during his tour and that he was realizing his ambition of becoming an international comedic star in the manner of some of the musical performers he admires. If this is the direction his career is taking him then it is entirely possible that the scathing racial commentary we have come to love in his past performances may be softened up with a greater emphasis on the more universal subjects of gender, sex, and politics. I therefore view the HBO special as the successful culmination of Chris Rock’s groundbreaking experiment on the global appeal of America’s stand-up comedy.
Sounds like two white folks to me. Me and the rest of my ignorant minority compatriots thought it was hilarious.
Sam – Thanks for sharing the observations. That was my gut feeling, that he was shifting his material around to play better for the international crowds. I would love to see Rock succeed overseas, and your experiences in London highlight that he’ll have to move away from the race-focused material to do that. He’s a better comedian than most of the material in Kill The Messenger, and it’s disappointing that Rock & HBO produced such a shoddy record of his international experience.
I saw his live show in Dublin in September & I have all his DVDs and he’s just hilarious.
I didn’t think he changed his material too much to suit the audience. I’d say most of the show was the same as what it would have been in the US.
Whether you’re white or black makes no difference. You don’t have to be black to find the race jokes funny. I was laughing my ass off anyway, for the whole show.
You are a fucking moron, and this review is a waste of time and space. Idiot. Fuck.
Since you were so anal about Rock’s special, let me be the same with your review. I found it to be incredibly boring and three fourths of it was about you moaning about how you didn’t like the edits between the three shows. I get it. I didn’t like it either, but does it really take that many words to convey such a minor grievance? This was a poor review with almost no content.
Grade – F
Is this guy fucking joking? jeffery williams is a HATER this was the best stand-up comedy I’ve seen in at least 10 yrs. from any comedian black or white Chris Rock is the MAN!! fuck this HATER’s article !!
KILL the MESSENGER is FUNNY as HELL!!
this article is bullshit!! over 500,000 people
attended this show(the three shows combined)
wow put that in the article …A -HOLE
Rock is an angry bigot.
As one who had edited video for several years, this is one of the best composite editing I have ever seen. The cuts are so right on, so often that the rare occasions when they are off, it is still slight enough to hardly notice. Chris is so animated how can you pay so much attention to the cuts?
I happen to agree that my thought was this was not planned and that’s the real beauty of it. I hadn’t thought to view it in the negative manner as the reviewer chose.
I found it it be one of the most entertaining stand-ups I have seen. His routine is so damned funny and he handles race like a human being.
I watched it for the second time tonight and enjoyed it as much, or even more, than the first time I caught it.
However, in fairness I can see why the format would not work for everyone.
I agree with the review and was pretty disappointed with KTM. You’d think Rock’s had plenty of time to develop new material, but the jokes here were old and tiresome.
Not very funny at all.
Jokes about whether or not white people can say the n-word?
Is there a rule somewhere that requires every black comedian to include this tired joke in his/her routine?
You’re supposed to be better than that, Rock.
The review was accurate and you only need to look at all of the other sites and comments that agree with it. I did not laugh once at this special and I laughed a LOT in the others. I typed in chris rock + disappointing + nat as good + not funny. Just try that and see what the “consensus” is. No longer relevant and no longer funny. He has fallen into the Chappel (sp) trap. He has taken heat and acquired guilt for making fun of blacks in the past. When he was on Oprah and she slapped his hands for saying “nigger” so often and then he found out that his ancestors were strong, respectable and influential members of the african american and white community he cried and I think that changed him. This time around his humor seemed anything but humorous. It seem bitter and actually hateful. I think that I would agree. We should Kill The Messenger of a shit performance.
Even though Chris Rock remains one of the best comedians of our time, I agree with Jeffrey Williams that Kill the Messenger was a below par performance by Rock. It’s true that trying out new stuff is required for all stand-up comedians, but Chris should try out new stuff while still retaining the old theatrics that made him a legend. However, this is not to say that Chris Rock has lost his edge -he’s still the best out there.
this was an incredibly poor review. i think someone got carried away writing a nit-picking know-it-all rant about film editing. as for rock, yes, some jokes could have been better – the safari stuff for sure – and the whole can white people say the n-word…was tired too.
with that being said, i STILL laughed my head off the entire time. i can’t find another comedian out there with the delivery skills of rock – he knows HOW to tell a joke, and that’s why he’s funny…he can make a point hit home with an audience. he’s a master “messenger” – and what i love about him, is that his material is REAL – it’s stuff that has clearly just occurred to him, or come from his real life experiences (like the red lobster bit). He’s not stuck in one particular type of comedy like say lisa lampanelli. I think Rock’s possibilities are endless, and one show that’s maybe not as great as older ones by no means = end of career!
I’d like to agree with the article writer that the way this special was edited was unacceptable. It truly made me enjoy the show less even though I am a Chris Rock fan. Hopefully this isn’t a new trend.
I absolutely agree with you. Rock has always been my favorite but KTM just didn’t quite do it for me.