Purely Joyful Movie!

From my favorite movies..

Crappy film

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Down to Earth (2001): Dir: Chris Weitz, Paul Weitz / Cast: Chris Rock, Regina King, Chazz Palminteri, Eugene Levy, Mark Addy: Lifeless comedy about bringing down to reality one's standards of living. If one's standards of living regarded viewing this film then living standards went down. Remake of Heaven Can Wait, Chris Rock plays a struggling comedian who dreams of presenting an act at the Apollo nightclub. Upon being hit by a truck he is sent to Heaven but informed that he was taken ahead of his time. They send him back in the body of a white rich man who is not very well liked. He learns that there are plans to murder him. He also falls in love with Regina King who is struggling to keep a hospital opened. Directors Chris and Paul Weitz previously made the much funnier American Pie but this garbage is a major step down and adds none of intelligence of their sexual high school romp. Their handling of the black man white man image of the hero is poorly portrayed. We are given glimpses of the white guy but he is never well established as a character. Rock is reciting his comedy act right from the standard setup right up to his eventual relationship with King. Her function is to be the love interest and nothing more. Chazz Palminteri and Eugene Levy are wasted in flat roles. Heavenly aspects fail because God doesn't make mistakes. No, the mistakes are made by the filmmakers. Score: 2 / 10

I am a big fan of the film "Heaven Can Wait" and I also like Chris Rock (I thought), but this movie shows a strangely charmless side of the comedian when he really needs to be likable for this film to work.A misconceived idea from the get-go, "Down to Earth" at least would have worked comically if it had emulated that old Lily Tomlin/Steve Martin soul-switching comedy, "All of Me." In that movie the filmmakers understood that the comedy is to be found in seeing both sides of the soul switch. An old white comedian should have been cast as the body that Rock inhabits (Steve Martin or Chevy Chase)and the comedy would come from Rock doing what he always does and from seeing a white guy acting like Rock. Seeing Chris Rock essentially just be Chris Rock (he is a HORRIBLE, expressionless actor to boot) throws the comedy off-kilter. We rarely see the white body he inhabits and no humor is derived from his having to navigate his youthful self through a puffy, 53 year old body.It's like it was made by people who had no training in comedy before. Don't they know that filming someone saying funny things and cutting away to people laughing uproariously is a killer of comedy? Don't they know that comedies of misunderstandings and mistaken identity require consistent points of view? I started the film with high hopes but it grew dumber and dumber as it went along, blithely missing every opportunity for real humor. And don't get me started on the "romance". Regina King is wonderful but Rock is such a limited actor that she has nothing to play off of.By the time they got around to recreating the finale that is so touching in the Beatty film and so embarrassingly flat here, I had had it. A totally valueless film and probably not a very smart premise to start with.

How is this so highly rated? I love Chris Rock and that's why I went to see it but I was so disappointed, if it hadn't had been raining I would have walked out.Chris Rock doesn't seem to understand what the film is about. He is supposed to be playing a unfunny Black comedian reincarnated back into a white businessman who has just been bumped off by his wife and assistant. Even in a comedy you have to bring some sense of reality to make the humor work. His character doesn't change; he continues to act like a black guy, and not just any one but himself, Lance. Of course that's what you'd do…your given a second chance, for no good reason other than heaven making an administrative error, and you use that most precious gift to continue acting in the same dumb way you did before. Why does heaven give him a second chance other than the weak plot demands it? Lance doesn't do anything special to deserve it in his previous life; he just seems to take it for granted he is entitled to it. He never listens to anyone else or any advice, he just talks over everyone in his own self centered pursuit of a woman he glimpsed ten minutes ago.The point of view was all wrong, if it was supposed to be funny seeing a middle-aged white guy talking like a bad black comedian then that's what we should have seen on screen, not Rock except in very brief flashes. The reincarnated Lance shows no sense of having gone through the biggest change anyone can make other than changing sex. There is no awareness of his situation at all. We are supposed to despise the ruthless business man but Rock is an equally irritating replacement character with a different but just as selfish moronic single mindedness in getting the girl. The idea of a young attractive black girl being genuinely in love with a paunchy, balding and pretty ancient old man and kissing him passionately on screen would have just been stomach turning and I am at least glad Rock wouldn't let the cameras stray off him for that.Rock just didn't do anything to make it work. He created an unsympathetic selfish character who acted oblivious to his own situation and the reactions of everyone around him. But worse, he just wasn't funny, which let's face it most of us had gone to see.

The main character Lance Barton gets killed and to heaven before his time. When heaven learns about the mistake he is given the body of just deceased rich old and white Mr. Wellington.A young black guy in a old white mans body still behaving like the young black man is maybe funny if you see it done by an old white actor. In this movie I ended up reminding myself several times: "Chris Rock is supposed to be an old white guy".The whole concept does not play as intended: The "illusion" is not transported well and the love story is not believable at all. The fact that all you see is Chris Rock playing a young black guy, because the old white person everyone is supposed to see is only shown in small scenes, is to much of a challenge for the viewers "suspension of disbelief".