SITE TOOLS
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Down to Earth, 2001, 87 minutes, Rated PG-13
By Carla Robinson
One morning, I was indulging in my usual guilty pleasure - listening to The
Howard Stern Show - and I heard Chris Rock touting his latest vehicle, Down to Earth.
Robin, Howard’s punchy sidekick, wasn’t sold, but Brother Rock swore Down to
Earth was a laugh a minute. I was also skeptical, but he won us both over. After all, The
Chris Rock Show had been sensational. And Rock is the man who brought us Bring the Pain,
the most searing stand-up since Eddie Murphy made us delirious.
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Rock made his new film seem smart, funny,
and entertaining. As co-writer and executive producer, he certainly seemed qualified to
make good on his promises. But a few days later I was listening to Howard again, and when
asked about Down to Earth, Robin could only sigh. I knew exactly how she felt - like a
sucker.
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Down to Earth is a remake of Warren Beatty’s 1978
hit, Heaven Can Wait, itself a remake of 1941’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan. As with any
copy of a copy, resolution is thin. Rock told interviewers that he hadn’t been
familiar with Beatty’s work, but after meeting him, Rock thought he was so cool that
he decided to check it out. He came across Heaven Can Wait and thought the film would be a
hoot with Black characters, “I thought, ‘Richard Pryor should have done this
movie.’” And who better to take advantage of Pryor’s missed opportunity
than Rock himself? He took the idea to his writing team - Lance Crouther, Ali Le Roi and
Louis CK - and when they watched the film together, as Rock told the New York Times,
“We went, ‘Aw, yeah, we can annihilate this.’”
And annihilate they did.
Rock takes over the Beatty role, but with a twist. Instead of being a star quarterback,
he’s Lance Barton, a New York bike messenger who aspires to be (what else?) a
stand-up comic. When he’s hit by a truck and goes to heaven, his attending angel
realizes he was taken before his time. Lance is sent back to earth in the only available
vessel, the body of an old, White, millionaire named Mr. Wellington. To the people in the
movie, Lance looks like Mr. Wellington, to us he looks like Chris Rock. When he re-enters
the world as Mr. Wellington, he finds his wife cheating with his assistant, who also has
his hands in Mr. Wellington’s money pot.
Before long, Lance (from inside Mr. Wellington) falls in love with a beauty named Sontee,
played by the underrated Regina King, who is one of Wellington’s enemies but
doesn’t remain so for long. This calls for massive suspension of disbelief, as
it’s hard to buy Regina falling in love with this pot-bellied, sexagenarian White guy
(I could see if he was Sean Connery). What follows is a flavorless romantic comedy that
goes absolutely nowhere, in spite of lots of comedic possibilities. For laughs, there are
a few recycled jokes from Rock’s stand-up acts thrown in. M
May 2001
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