The Original Kings of Comedy
First screened in October 2000 / Most recently screened and reviewed in August 2025
Director: Spike Lee. Documentary record of Charlotte, NC, stops on the 1999 "Kings of Comedy" stand-up tour, featuring Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer, and Bernie Mac. In Brief:
Uproarious. Technically modest but still crafted. Richly engaged with each artist and with audience.
VOR:③
Valuable record of three high-batting-average comics followed by a prodigy. Also strong as a joyful portrait of time, place, and community.
This movie opened 25 years ago today, so I've known for weeks how tonight was going to go. I remember my and my friend's conniptions of laughter like they were yesterday. I texted her during the built-in intermission, and the memory was just as lively for her.
Steve Harvey, on the way way high end of his shtick, spread over three interstitial sets. D.L. Hughley, an early, rapid-fire accelerator of the evening. Cedric the Entertainer, positioned as protracted cool-down; hang in for the punchlines, and watch him literally pop-and-lock. And Bernie Mac batting cleanup, Omg, OMGGGGG, start to finish. They all do fantastic versions of what they each do. And it's inspired on Spike Lee's part to feed us just a few snippets of down time among this fond foursome, without violating the integrity of our night at the show.
The audience cutaways are a huge part of this movie's joy: in timing, in tone, in personality. So much respect to the Kings, but no question these crowd members are co-creators of these two electric evenings in Charlotte, presented as one. The way they make the interludes about classic R&B come alive with their on-our-feet, shoulder-rolling, know-all-the-words responses. The belly laughs, in pockets and waves. The people laughing so hard they can't help standing up. The smattering of patrons, heavy-lidded and curling their lips at each or all of the Kings like, "well, I'm not impressed." The ones who get actively roped into Harvey's and Hughley's routines, like Boogie, with his suspiciously weighed-down jacket and his job at "computer school." Priceless.
Lee and perennial editor Barry Alexander Brown have so much fun with this audience. Making Boogie come alive to us in one way in the front row the first time Hughley calls him out, and changing our visual relationship to him each of the two times he resurfaces. Noticing the woman who threw her underwear on stage at Steve well before he clocked it. Framing the whole event as a bunch of people getting four fat helpings of what they paid for from practiced professionals, but framing it at the same time as a give-and-take collaboration, an integrated circuit. For their part, each King does their thing, but three have obviously done all the necessaries to rig up the night as a strategized, next-level blast-off for Bernie's career, which absolutely did its job, to all of our benefit for many years. Can we as a nation—even this nation—agree that we all miss him? In any case, it's almost as much of a heist film as Inside Man, where one person steals the night, but actually everyone was in on it the whole time.
This is a concert documentary I can 100% get behind, and have many times. And all four of these Kings have suits as giant as David Byrne's without even making a a thing of it! Grade:B+
(in October 2000: B)
(I originally wrote this review on Letterboxd, where you can comment if you'd like.)
