The Best of The Chris Rock Show – Volume 2 by Hbo Home Video

Actors

• Chris Rock
• Grandmaster Flash
• Monteria Ivey
• Wanda Sykes
• Lance Crouther

Format

• Closed-captioned
• Color
• Dolby
• NTSC

Editorial Review

Chris Rock lives up to his reputation on this second collection of sketches and parodies from his HBO series–he is not only funny, he has a genuine political edge, pointing up contradictions and racial tension in American society. His material ranges from mock investigative reports (including an exposé of racist toys like “Mr. Sweet Potato Head” and “Low Expectations Scrabble”) to commercial parodies (such as ads for the Malcolm X Games–“Because being extreme isn't just for white devils anymore”). But his best work has got to be his genuine on-the-street interviews, in which he asks men at boxing gyms to name their favorite white fighter or asks random New Yorkers if black people should receive reparations for slavery. He even goes down to South Carolina to talk to residents about why the Confederate flag flies over the state capitol; he finally gets a number of people on the street to agree to a different flag that replaces the stars in the Confederate flag with the stars of the WB (like Brandy and Robert Townsend). What people are willing to say in front of him is both funny and frightening. Chris Rock makes cutting-edge comedy seem simple; after an hour of this show, it's incomprehensible why Saturday Night Live and Mad TV are so abysmally toothless. –Bret Fetzer