Dave Chappelle's Block Party: Critic Reviews

Dave Chappelle's Block Party is perhaps the first concert movie since Stop Making Sense to give you a blissful buzz.

Dave Chappelle's exhilarating new film chronicles a free block party that was held in 2004 on a dead-end street in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn.

You will wish you'd been invited to Dave Chappelle's Block Party, but watching the documentary about the September 2004 concert event is the next best thing.

There's an innocent joy and a genial detachment, as if Chappelle's playing host to his own celebrity. He's Johnny Carson-ing his fame, as it were.

It's a jubilant, civic-minded lollapalooza.

This picture remains faithful to the underlying affability of both Chappelle and Gondry, orchestrating a feel-good homestyle vibe that, while peppered with moments of sly political commentary, never harshes its own, slightly bittersweet mellow.

Once in a great while there's a movie that's so funny, infectious and welcoming - a movie that makes you feel so good about America and the people in it - you just want to climb inside the screen and live there.

His racial jokes have an edge, but they are not as deadly as the Chappelle's Show skits.

This is a concert film with real soul, message and emotion. Its coin is all too rare these days.

It feels rangy but is also a work of expert timing.

Dave Chappelle's Block Party is a fairly disorganized film about a fairly disorganized concert, redeemed by the good feeling Chappelle sheds like a sunbeam on every scene.

...an uplifting, funny and engaging star-studded affair.

No one enjoys the free festivities more than Chappelle, who wanders through the film like a kid on Christmas morning. A very funny kid.

Dave Chappelle's Block Party confirms that he's not just instinctually funny, he has impeccable musical taste.

...an off-the-wall celebration that mixes humor and music to amusing, if not life-changing, effect.

Block Party is an uproarious good time, part documentary, part concert film, part who knows what?

A heady spirit of spontaneity permeates the proceedings, suggesting the entire pic, much like the concert it documents, was conceived, planned and completed in a single burst of creative enthusiasm.

Strictly for fans of the musical acts and those who think everything Chappelle does is genius.

It's intermittently funny, but it peaks too soon and runs far too long. And for all its length, Block Party doesn't tell us much about Chappelle that we haven't seen before.

While unlikely to enter the annals of great concert filmmaking, Dave Chappelle's Block Party does capture the moment at hand with a breezy, offhanded and utterly user-friendly charm.

Gangly, disarming and slyly witty, Chappelle is at ease with people of all ages and races, and has a knack for finding humour without forcing it.

It's a defiant act of optimistic patriotism. This is what Dave Chappelle's America looks like, and now that we get the idea, there's no reason we can't live in it too.

Dave Chappelle and hip-hop greats throw a party to remember.

'This is the best single day of my career,' Chappelle says at the film's end, sitting down for a quiet moment after the music and laughter have stopped. And you absolutely believe him.