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Rating: 
Summary: Bring the Pain---Will a DVD be available???
Review: After I saw Bring The Pain, Chris Rock instantly became my favorite comedian. It is hilarious!! My stomach was aching so badly after the first time I saw it that I was trying not to laugh anymore...but it's impossible. Anytime I see the term "tossed salad" either on a menu or hear the words coming out of the waiter's mouth, my husband and I crack up laughing. I've been trying to find the DVD version of Bring the Pain, but I'm quickly realizing that it doesn't exist. I'm hoping that I'll find it soon.
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Summary: FUNNY CAMEO
Review: After putting off watching this cameo from Chris for a long time, because the sound on the DVD I bought was so unclear (and this is a staged live performance), I finally decided to stick with it and watch it on a leisurely Sunday. Guess I was spectacularly wrong about this performance, there's some real side-splitting stuff in here! Chris takes on drunk politicians, drugs, the innocence (or not) of OJ, subtleties of relationships between men and women and what makes each different, the ills of domestic abuse, the lack of popularity of books among the African-American community etc etc. Pronto-Purchase material, this. Perhaps even the absolutely best stand-up material I have seen from Chris Rock EVER. Hilarious!
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Summary: Why is this unavailable in the UK?
Review: Brilliant, just brilliant. It's such a shame that Chris Rock videos/cassettes aren't widely available in the UK, especially considering that what Rock has to say isn't exactly culture-bound. Sure, some of the humour is US-specific and related to the racial and political issues of 1996, but what Rock taps into is the nasty underbelly of life that we ALL like to think doesn't exist. His passion, his anger (and maybe frustration) all pour out onto the screen and you really get the impression that the man is laying himself bare - the sort of exhaustive stage-performance that you only really expect to see once in every comedian's life... but for Rock, it's just another killer routine. I could predictably warn people about his choice of language and the way in which his vocabulary is peppered with 'obscenity' - but like the finest of comedians, Rock's material is so rich and it's delivery is so slick, that swearing merely compliments what he says, rather than overpowering it. And quite frankly, if you're buying a Chris Rock video, you probably know what you're buying. A true comedy classic.
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Summary: From a white guys standpoint
Review: Chris Rock is without any doubts, hillarious! He has the best political views out of any other comedian I have seen. He may be a little extreme when it comes to that, but its all true. Bring The Pain is the better buy than ''Bigger & Blacker''. Simply because it is funnier. My favorite part is when he gets on the welfare issue. What he says is just so true, and funny at the same point in time. This is one of the best stand-up videos to come in a long time. I highly recommend this to anybody, regardless of any race. Everybody will truly love it!
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Summary: This WILL be a classic.
Review: I have never laughed so hard in my life... I laughed so hard I thought I was going to hurt myself. Every time I watch this I laugh out loud--even when I'm alone! You know, usually, once you know the jokes, things stop being so funny, but this NEVER stops being funny. You find yourself quoting Chris Rock in certain conversations, even making the facial expressions and the accent. His intelligent, and yet hilarious commentaries are always SO relevant with what's going on in the world. Chris Rock is the new funniest man alive! See also, Bigger and Blacker (now available). It's not quite as funny as this one, but still the same... (Warning, for those of you not familiar: he does use 4-letter words, so if that offends you, then don't watch. However, he really knows *how* to use them, so you might get an education ;o)
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Summary: Chris Rock, black conservative leader?
Review: I've been hoping to get my hands on a copy of "Bring The Pain" ever since college, when my friends and I would occasionally sit around getting drunk and listening to this performance on CD. Well, I finally have it, and even as a married man watching it sober in my apartment this DVD still cracks me up. Since this performance was recorded in the mid-'90's and it's now 2004 I was worried the material might seem dated, but Rock's insightful and colorful discussions of human failings are not only universal, but timeless. Much of what he discusses here may not be in the news anymore, but you could substitute any number of current happenings and his remarks would fit just as well. The man's animated style and frequent use of profanity are certanly entertaining, but beneath the shouted profanities is a razor-sharp wit backed by a lot of common sense and deep feel for irony. With his knack for cutting through rhetoric and hyprocrisy to get at the underlying truth, Rock could even be called one of America's leading black conservatives. Rock bursts out of the gate with a bitingly hilarious bit on Marion Barry, musing that Barry managed to get reelected as mayor of Washington after being convicted of behavior that would get you fired from McDonald's. Discussing a slightly more respectable figure in the form of Colin Powell, Rock highlights the low expectations whites hold for blacks by pointing out that an educated black general can be praised merely for speaking well. This being the mid-90's, there was the obligatory bit on O.J., but Rock manages to go deeper than most comics in analyzing what the case said about the nature of fame and America's racial divide. The real high point of the performance, though, is Chris's discussion of the divisions within black America itself, exemplified by the distinction he draws between black people and, well, a word I can't use on this site. At any rate, Rock's penetrating look at this country's black underclass and its pathologies is hilarious, thought-provoking, and deadly accurate at the same time. There a few more good bits here, including an off-color riff on platonic friendship, but it's Rock's look at racial issues that makes this DVD for me. He may occasionally drive home his points crudely, but Rock also advocates old-fashioned ideas like responsibility and self-respect which are all too lacking today, black or white. A true equal-opportunity offender, Rock deserves a shot from all thinking people.
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Summary: fantastic
Review: This show was Chris Rock's first hour long special on HBO. As Rock as remarked, it is this show that really launched his career. Before this, he had made a movie or two (CB4) and had a shorter comedy special, but his career had pretty much hit a plateau. "Bring the Pain" changed this. The show is incredibly funny and the material was very fresh when it was first broadcast. Unfortunately, some of the humor is dated (comments about the Million Man March and the OJ Simpson murder trial). However, even with some of the jokes being dated, they are still funny. There is quite a bit of race humor (which while funny, as a white man I can't repeat any of it) and also sexual/relationship humor. While Rock does curse (often at times), he does not lose sight of the fact that the humor is in the joke, not the language. Rock's delivery is perfect and this is a much watch DVD for a fan of Chris Rock. It is also a great introduction to Rock for anyone who is not familiar with his work.
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