Washington, D.C. Alderman Mays Gilliam is surprised when his worst day in life—his girlfriend breaks up with him, his bicycle is run over, he is broke—is suddenly followed by his best day in life when he is chosen by the Party to run as the first African-American candidate for President of the US. Mays accepts and is given assistants Martin and Debra. However, Mays is unaware that he was chosen because Senator Arnot assumes the Party is going to lose anyway, since the polls indicate that their rival, Brian Lewis, has a 90% approval rate. Arnot thus hopes to gain minority sympathy when he will run for President himself at the next election. However, Mays, running with his brother as Vice President, surprisingly becomes more popular and wins the election, while also finding a new girlfriend, Lisa.
After Barack Obama was elected as the first African-American President in history, many film critics retroactively gained new interest in Chris Rock's comedy "Head of State" filmed five years earlier, which predicted and satirized the process of the said minority running for the White House. Surprisingly underrated, "Head of State" is a fun little film that owes 90% of its charm to Rock's comedic talent, and some of his jokes, delivered through wise-cracking one-liners, occasionally show his comedy potentials to the fullest ("Your mother's ass is so big that when she sits she is three ft taller!"; "America is the richest, most powerful country in the world! If America were a person, she would be a big titty woman!"). The sole sequence where the protagonist Mays hears he is chosen to run, already sets up the tone in a delicious way ("We want you to run for President." - "President of what?" - "Of the United States." - "Of what?" - "Of America." - "Which America...?" - "North!"). The idea of Mays as the unlikely hero works as a comedy, though not as a political satire since it never truly scratches into some more complex socio-economic or political layers of the situation at that time, nor is it that subversive to gain some new insights into the election system. Also, nobody of the other characters gets a chance to shine as much as Rock, which is especially noticeable in the pale, underwritten character of Lisa, Mays' love interest, or Bernie Mac's character, who delivers only one good gag in the entire film. While not as a great as "The Candidate", "Head of State" is still a good piece of entertainment which accidentally announced a new era in politics.
Grade:++
No comments:
Post a Comment