Movie Review: Dave Chappelle's Block Party

Dave Chappelle's Block Party deserves an Academy Award nomination for truth in advertising, with an emphasis on "party."

The mix of interviews, performances and shtick may make for a loosey-goosey movie, but its "wish-you-had-been-there" quotient is off the chart.

"This is the concert I've always wanted to see," says Chappelle, who recruits Mos Def, Kanye West, Erykah Badu and Talib Kweli, among others, to perform outdoors and in the rain.

Chappelle even scores a Fugees reunion.

Filmed in 2004 before Chappelle went "crazy," it offers no insight into or evidence of his pending decision to leave it all including $50 million in contractual obligations behind. In fact, outside of having his name on the title, he is just a supporting player.

But what we do see of him, as he travels to his hometown in Ohio to recruit a racially mixed group of Buckeyes to travel by bus to the concert in Brooklyn, or kibitzes backstage with musicians or onstage with the crowd, offers a glimpse of why he is so popular.

As a person, he's got the common touch, and as a performer, he can effortlessly switch between improvisational stream of consciousness and stand-up disciplines.

And the dude clearly loves good music, plays a little piano himself and sees musicians and comics as two sides of the same coin.

At first, the music is peripheral to his ruminations, but the performances slowly take over. And when they do, the film, by "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and music video director Michel Gondry, soars.

This is not misogynistic or violent hardcore rap, but politically, spiritually and musically uplifting stuff, with a horn-section-sweet and rock-guitar-heavy house band providing a sonic solidarity to the acts.

Highlights include West, Kweli and Common with a smokin' "Get 'Em High"; Dead Prez urging political action on "Turn off the Radio"; 90- pounds-soaking-wet Badu, her faux 'fro fighting a losing battle with the wind, joining a formidable Jill Scott and the Roots on "You Got Me"; and "Killing Me Softly With His Song" and "President" by Fugees Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean, respectively, reunited after seven years.

To all of which the irrepressible Chappelle is icing on the cake.

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