You So Crazy

This stand-up-comedy concert film with Martin Lawrence (Boomerang) can’t really hold a candle to Richard Pryor Live in Concert, the precedent it seems most indebted to, but you might say there’s been nothing like it since Pryor’s landmark performance. One encounters the same uninhibited frankness about sex and physicality in general and ghetto experience in particular, and there’s a welcome absence of the sort of misogyny and homophobia one usually encounters in such circumstances. One never quite feels about Lawrence as one felt about Pryor, that he’s struggling to save his own soul, and there may be less poetry in his observations, but there’s honesty and boldness to spare and some wonderful laughs as well; chances are you’ll feel healthier on your way out of this show than you felt going in. The director is So I Married an Axe Murderer’s Thomas Schlamme. (JR)

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