We haven’t seen much of Chris Rock on screen for the past couple of years. He had a cameo in You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, and his voice has been heard in Bee Movie and Madagascar 2, but his last proper movie was I Think I Love My Wife more than two years ago. While he has both Death At A Funeral and Grown Ups coming up, he’s now announced that he’s teaming up with Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films for a movie based on a GQ article called, ‘Will You Be My Black Friend?’.
The article is a humourous account by Devin Friedman, about his clumsy attempts to expand his group of friends to include a few people who aren’t white. We’re presuming that in the movie version, Rock is going to be the man being pursued as a friend by an inept white guy.
It’s a film that could either be enlightening and very funny, or come across as crass and pointless, but there’s certainly plenty of scope to use the concept to make a good movie. Signing Rock fairly early in the process is a good idea too, because much of his comedy has been a fairly smart assessment of racial issues and what’s really going on behind what people say.
The only thing that worries us is the presence of Oprah Winfrey. It’s not that we think her company will screw up the movie, but just that with her move into making more film just brings us closer to the day when she completely takes over the world.