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Back Shelf Beauties
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Dave Chappelle's Block Party The idea behind Dave Chappelle's Block Party is a novel one. Let hot Oscar-nominated director Michel Gondry film hot TV star/comic Dave Chappelle organizing a block party and concert in Brooklyn with some of the hottest music stars around. Yep, it's hot, and yields a party of a film full of laughs and great music. Chappelle serves as the movie's and party's host as he goes around Brooklyn and his adopted rural Ohio hometown passing out "golden tickets" inviting people to see The Fugees, Kanye West, Mos Def, The Roots, Erykah Badu and more in concert (Chappelle is from DC, but didn't hand out any golden tickets here. I guess he doesn't love us.). Along the way, the audience gets to see Chappelle at his best as he interacts with a wide cross section of people, all of whom are attracted to the fun-loving, charismatic funny man who has a magical way of connecting with each person he meets. The movie's best moments involve Chappelle trading jokes with each lucky ticket recipient, some of whom are thrilled to meet one of their heroes, then commanding the stage riffing on everything from the crowd's ethnic composition, telling Your Momma jokes with Mos Def and making sure each person who came to the party walked away knowing they had a once in a lifetime experience, whether they grew up in the country and visited NY for the first time thanks to his organized bus trip for the Ohioans or lived in NY and were lucky enough to win a contest to attend the free concert. Early on in Dave Chappelle's Block Party, Gondry does a fantastic job mixing together scenes of the event's planning, the concert performances and Chappelle's interactions with people, but he starts to include less and less of Chappelle throughout the movie, which leads to the film losing steam. It's fun to see The Fugees, The Roots and Jill Scott perform, but concerts are much more emotionally moving and dramatic when you are there live and in person. It's the other stuff that makes Dave Chappelle's Block Party fun. If you already like Dave Chappelle, you'll love the movie. If you never saw him before, you might find a new favorite comedian. 3 Waffles (Out Of 4) Copyright 2006 - WaffleMovies.com
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