Top Five is a romantic comedy that succeeds more as a comedy (with a lot of drama) than as a romance. Viewers should know that this is a very, very “R” rated comedy that tackles subjects of race, sexuality, addiction, and creative identity in powerful and profane ways. They should also know that the movie is freaking hysterical.

Top Five has a “one crazy night” structure (actually it’s one crazy night and one crazy day).   Andre Allen, former comedian known for his “Hammy the Bear” movies, wants to be taken seriously. His new movie “Uprize”, is about the slave rebellion in Haiti that took place in 1791. Andre (played by Chris Rock) has to go all over New York promoting “Uprize”, while his fiancé, Erica, prepares for their reality show wedding in Los Angeles. Chelsea, a reporter from The New York Times, tags along with him to get an interview and gather material for a profile piece. In the course of the day, they meet Andre’s old friends and Chelsea’s mother and daughter, they each have relationship turbulence with their significant others, and they reveal many secrets about their lives, especially about their mutual struggles with alcoholism.

As a romantic comedy, I thought this movie fell a little flat because I felt no sexual chemistry at all between Chris Rock and Rosario Dawson, who plays Chelsea. It moves adroitly through the steps of romantic comedy, and the script is fine, and so are the characters, but they lacked sexual spark. In every other way, the performances by Rock and Dawson were impeccable, and I loved they way they talked to each other – but I found myself much more interested in listening to them talk than in watching them kiss.

It’s odd that the movie fails to convey sexual longing, since it so powerfully conveys other longings – longing for recognition, longing for connection, longing for self-expression, and longing for booze. Watch the way Chelsea slaps her four-year sobriety coin down as though she’s a Navy SEAL being challenged, and the fond, dreamy look on her face when they go to a liquor store, and she runs her hands along the bottles, picks one up, cradles it near her face, and says, “Mmmmmmm. My favorite.” During one of my favorite scenes, Andre does a phone interview which is very, very funny, while groping behind the radiator of his childhood home for an old bottle of liquor, which is very, very scary.

This movie talks about so many serious things in so many offensive ways, but my lord I laughed so hard that I seriously thought I would pee my pants. My sheltered little middle-aged suburban white woman self has never heard the “N-word” so many times in my life and I was not sure what to do with that but I couldn’t stop laughing even when I was wondering if I should be laughing or if I should be totally horrified – which, I think , is the mark of really good, challenging, transgressive comedy. DMX makes an appearance as himself that is just about the best thing ever. If anyone tries to spoil it for you, shoot them. NOT ONE WORD if you have seen the movie already. DO NOT DESTROY THE GLORY OF THE DMX. Andre also gets conflicting marriage advice from Whoopi Goldberg, Adam Sandler, and Jerry Seinfeld, also playing themselves.

This year’s Oscar for “best rapid-fire monologue” ought to go to Kevin Hart, who plays Andre’s agent, and who delivers a speech over the phone that consists almost entirely of the ‘f word’ and the ‘n word’. It happens near the beginning of the movie which is pretty clever because you have a chance to realize early on what you are in for. This is not a movie for the faint of heart. You will see a lot of naked people (mostly women, but some men), hear a lot of cuss words, and see some truly mortifying sex scenes. There’s a subplot about a gay man that some people find offensive – I do too, but for different reasons. I love the two main female characters, who really run away with the movie, but there’s some pretty problematic stuff there, too.

Spoilers begin now:

First of all, let’s talk about the gay guy. Chelsea’s boyfriend, Brad, turns out to be gay and cheating on her. I think that given the many, many negative portrayals of LGBTQIA people in the media, the plot line involving Brad was unnecessary and unfortunate, but I don’t think it’s specifically homophobic. My problem with Brad isn’t that he’s gay, it’s that he’s fake. In this movie, people are praised when they are authentic and condemned when they are fake. Brad is fake on three levels – he’s in the closet, he’s having a relationship with Chelsea under false pretenses (even if one assumes that he is bisexual, he appears to have presented himself to Chelsea and to the world as straight) and he’s cheating on Chelsea. The storyline involving Brad would have come across as much less homophobic if there were any other gay characters in the movie to balance him out – but there aren’t, which is dumb, because the movie has a zillion characters, almost any one of which could have been a gay man in a healthy relationship without in any way affecting the plot.

What I find more offensive that the portrayal of Brad in general is that when Chelsea does the tampon thing (no, I’m not going to tell you what it is) it’s played for laughs. But that pisses me off, because it’s abuse, and abuse is not funny whether it’s male on female or vice versa. And no one points out the fact that Chelsea resents performing a certain sex act, but she never, ever tells Brad that she doesn’t like it. She resents it, but he doesn’t know that she hates doing this particular thing until she does the abusive tampon prank. The movie makes the case that Brad deserves his physical punishment because he was fake, but Chelsea deserved to be cheated on because she was fake, too. But it doesn’t take Chelsea’s responsibility for the prank far enough.

Which brings us to the women using sex for gain issue. In the course of the movie there’s a lot of references to women using sex as currency. There are strippers and prostitutes. There’s Erica’s reveal that she doesn’t like giving Andre oral sex but she does it because, “I knew one day I’d have to ask you to do something you didn’t want to do.” Just like Brad, Andre is floored by the revelation that she didn’t like performing oral sex, and just like the prostitutes, Erica was using the sex as currency. The scene in which Erica reveals this is actually a very poignant scene. It’s the only scene in which Erica is not fake, which makes me think that Rock did put some thought into this – it’s more than just a casual “women are whores” concept. It makes you wonder why Chelsea also performs the act that she dislikes without ever saying that she dislikes it. If the film was going to raise the topic of women using sex for money, power, stability, love, whatever – using sex to get something other than immediate physical pleasure, then I would have liked the film to dig a little deeper into why the characters do what they do, and what that means in terms of gender and relationships.

Last thing – I try not to read other reviews before I write my own, but I cheated and read one on The Mary Sue that made an excellent point.  There’s a reviewer who Andre hates  who has written scathing reviews of Andre’s past movies.  Andre hates his past movies too, but that doesn’t mean he enjoys reading reviews like, “I wouldn’t watch this movie if it were playing on the inside of my glasses.”  Near the end of the movie, the reviewer apologizes and says they took their criticism too far.  The Mary Sue points out that it would have been more interesting if the reviewer had stuck by her reviews, and Andre and the reviewer had talked about what reviews mean, and what each of them think about his movies.  It’s disappointing that the movie, which is in general hard-hitting, takes the easy path on this one by having the reviewer recant.

Here endeth the spoilers. I didn’t agree with everything in Top Five but I enjoyed arguing with it in my head. I laughed my head off even when I sort of thought I shouldn’t, and I had a lot to think about. More than anything, I long for a buddy movie starring Gabrielle Union (who plays Erica) and Rosario Dawson.

I think Chris Rock is a better writer than an actor but his writing is really remarkable. This movie is not for the squeamish. I was completely unprepared for how raunchy it is. But once I got the hang of it, I had a great time.