"Down to Earth"

The script, credited to Rock, Lance Crouther, Ali LeRoi and Louis C.K., isn't much more than a rack for Rock to hang his jokes on, but it's perfectly serviceable. And there are a few moments that are played less for laughs than as a way of making the point that there are certain things -- jokes or mannerisms or figures of speech -- that white people just can't get away with. When Lance/Wellington tries to do his comedy routine for an all-black audience that sees him as a portly rich guy, their incredulous stares practically bore right through him. Outlining the difference between malls in black neighborhoods and those in white ones, Rock says, temporarily oblivious to the fact that his audience can't see that he's really black, "They ain't got nothing in the black mall but sneakers and baby clothes, 'cos all we're doing is running and screwing." The sequence works because we can see Lance/Wellington as Rock, but merely imagining the same sentence coming from a white guy is enough to make us cringe. The awkwardness of the audience washes over us too; the overwhelming sense that the joke is inappropriate, if not insensitive, puts us right in its shoes.

But mostly, "Down to Earth" isn't out to make any overt political or racial statements, and it's easy to get swept along by its buoyancy. Rock has everything it takes to keep the film from bogging down. Let loose, he cruises through the movie with a lightning-speed restlessness: As you're processing one joke, you can see his mind spinning forward to the next two.

Rock isn't easily pigeonholed as a comedian. Often his jokes ricochet freely and sometimes wildly around issues that people readily identify with black culture (poverty, whites' perceptions of blacks and vice versa, and so forth), but you never know when they're going to circle back with a vaguely surrealist ping. In the movie's opening scene Lance regales the doorman of a fancy apartment building with a lecture for assuming that he, a black man, must be standing on that doorstep only because he's delivering something. "How do you know I'm not here to visit a friend?" he asks the doorman, who shrinks with embarrassment. But instead of working the joke into the ground, Rock tweaks it lightly and sends it spinning. "How do you know I didn't just show up to have a cup of cocoa?" The innocence of the image and the bizarre spontaneity of it make the joke even funnier, without wearing down its pointedness.

The movie's funniest bits happen in its cracks and corners, places where Rock tucks in a seemingly spontaneous wisecrack or a gleefully blurted insult. Before Lance took over his body, Wellington had privatized a local community hospital, enraging one of its workers, Sontee (Regina King), who storms into Lance/Wellington's living room to inform him that she's not going down without a fight. When she tells him she's planning to make a stink at one of his upcoming board meetings, he thanks her for reminding him about it. "I gotta get a haircut, maybe buy some gators," he muses offhandedly.

Lance, of course, has fallen instantly in love with Sontee, and it's easy to see why. King, who has given knockout performances in pictures like "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" and "Jerry Maguire," has a shimmering, grounded presence here. She's not flashy, and she's the kind of performer you wish could become a star; she has just the right mix of believable, resonant beauty and finely tuned instincts, and her scenes with Rock work beautifully. Rock is a big personality, but he's able to scale back effortlessly when he's playing against King. She seems to be the kind of actress who makes her colleagues' work easier, whose openness sets off others' talent even as her own gifts shine subtly.

The most joyful moments in "Down to Earth" are the ones that radiate pure silliness. For instance, there's the sight of Lance/Wellington, pleased as punch to be dressed in Wellington's fancy-silly clothes (plaid golf knickers, argyle socks and a smoking jacket) or shimmying in front of a wall-size, motion-activated TV just for kicks. Or the vision of Lance/Wellington's housemaids (Martha Chaves and the lacerating Wanda Sykes) going about their regular household chores while proudly flouncing about in the puffy fur coats he has given them.

The Weitzes haven't come up with a masterpiece in "Down to Earth," but they have put their stamp on a perfectly pleasant 90-minute diversion. Even with a star as potent as Rock, their sensibility shines through the movie. And their integrity, balanced with a not-too-sugary sense of fun, is made obvious by one significant fact: Nowhere in "Down to Earth" do they even attempt to top the pie shocker of their first movie. "Down to Earth" doesn't have as many gently shaded angles as "American Pie" does, but from the way it hangs together as pure entertainment, it's clear that the Weitzes' first movie wasn't just beginner's luck. Paul and Chris Weitz know exactly what they're doing. Their talent lies in making it look as if they're just horsing around.

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