Top Five review: Chris Rock is on fine form in front of and behind the camera

Director: Chris Rock; Screenwriter: Chris Rock; Starring: Chris Rock, Rosario Dawson, Gabrielle Union, Cedric the Entertainer, JB Smoove; Running time: 102 mins; Certificate: 15

Even the Farrelly brothers, in their heyday, would have shied away from some of the bad sex gross-out gags that Chris Rock serves up in Top Five. He writes, directs and stars in a fitfully hilarious portrait of an A-List comedian at a personal crossroads, though the central romance with Rosario Dawson doesn't quite hit the same dizzy heights as the stand-up material which obviously inspired the film.

Rock calls his character Andre Allen, maybe a vague reference to Woody Allen as the action opens and unfolds on the streets of New York where he gasbags on wide-ranging matters with Dawson's savvy New York Times journalist Chelsea Brown. Behind the camera, too, Rock is quite inventive, jumping back and forth, in and out of conversations, to create a stream of consciousness feel without tying the story in knots. He is open with his wiseass views on Obama, Hollywood and the racist subtext of Planet of the Apes, but he takes a while to deliver the "rigorous honesty" that Brown wants in exchange for a "more than fair" profile piece.

Crucially, Allen is suspicious of Brown and The Times who have slated his new movie Uprize (the title alone...), a supposedly serious historical piece about a slave revolt in Haiti. Apparently, the paper's leading critic has made a habit of this, ever since Allen started taking second billing to a fighting bear in a harebrained action franchise (which was a box office smash, naturally). Brown regards his artistic aspirations with some scepticism, too, especially as the opening of Uprize is set to coincide with his wedding, a televised event designed to boost ratings for his already too-famous reality star fiancée (Gabrielle Union).

Rock is quite inventive, jumping back and forth, in and out of conversations, to create a stream of consciousness feel without tying the story in knots.

Dawson and Rock alternate between verbal sparring and some intimate sharing, although he baulks at having "too much information" when she describes scenes from her own chequered love-life. That's the cue for the film's most outrageous and uproarious moments, featuring Cedric the Entertainer as a bedroom gate-crasher and another sexual misadventure, involving a bottle of pepper sauce. Allen's attraction to Erica seems a mystery, however, until he begins to open up about the circumstances that drew him to her. It's no giveaway to say that booze was involved, because for one thing, it's a showbiz cliché and for Allen, it's a part of his life that has been well-documented. For more surprising reasons, it's an angle Brown is keen to explore.

Alcohol is ever-present as the two of them stroll by the bars and clubs of Manhattan and visit the projects where Allen grew up. At one stage, they peruse the aisles of a bodega (off-licence), both of them on the verge of slipping back into old ways. Dawson's journo is the cool, hard-nosed type and there is little in the way of genuine romance here, although there are references to Cinderella (Brown has written a relationship handbook inspired by the fairy-tale, under a pseudonym) which never quite sit comfortably between the loud, crude and lewd parts. The relationship that evolves isn't one you can buy into wholeheartedly. Rock is only really in his element when he's standing up on stage, alone, with just a mic in his hand.