BEFORE: This time Chris Rock carries over, in a remake of "Heaven Can Wait", which I watched back in Year 1, and which was also a remake of a film called "Here Comes Mr. Jordan". And we go from a deceased basketball coach to a deceased (and reincarnated) comedian - so I might as well roll with the death theme for a few days.
THE PLOT: After dying before his time, an aspiring comic gets a second shot at life...by being reincarnated as a wealthy but un-likeable businessman.
AFTER: In "Heaven Can Wait", Warren Beatty played a football player who got taken to heaven before his time was up, so his goal was to get back to Earth in another body, so he could play in the Super Bowl. In the re-re-make, Chris Rock plays a stand-up comic in the same situation, whose goal is to perform at the farewell concert for the Apollo Theater. It's a very clever way of working Chris Rock's routines into a narrative framework.
Problem is, the best body available is an older white millionaire - so his character has to struggle to get on the bill, and change his routine to accommodate his new appearance (for convenience's sake, he still looks like Chris Rock to the home audience, but to the other characters he looks like an old white dude). In addition he still has to run the millionaire's hospital board meetings, and find time to romance the woman who's protesting the hospital's corporate policies.
For this all to work, you have to concede the existence of heaven, and the inevitability of fate (people are scheduled to arrive in heaven on specific dates), but also allow the possibility that an angel can make mistakes (so, people sometimes don't arrive in heaven on specific dates - which is it?). Oh, and that heaven looks like a very elegant supper club, complete with bouncers, and run by an overly eye-talian manager. Or is that just the way heaven would look to an aspiring comedian?
NITPICK POINT: If, as a multi-millionaire, he could afford to buy a comedy club in order to practice his act, why couldn't he donate some money to keep the Apollo Theater open?
Also starring Regina King (last seen in "Ray"), Jennifer Coolidge (last seen in "Soul Men"), Greg Germann (last seen in "Clear and Present Danger"), Chazz Palminteri (last seen in "A Night at the Roxbury"), Eugene Levy (last seen in "Taking Woodstock"), Wanda Sykes, Mark Addy (last seen in "A Knight's Tale"), Frankie Faison (last seen in "Mississippi Burning"), with a cameo from John Cho.
RATING: 6 out of 10 fur coats
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