August 2, 2002 | Take your pick: It’s a comedy concert film, a feature-length primal scream or a textbook example of public-relations spin. Or maybe Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat is all of the above.
Right from the start of this wildly uneven opus, which ranges from laugh-out-loud hilarious to wonder-what-time-it-is tedious, it’s clear Lawrence feels he has scores to settle, resentments to air, and a reputation to rehabilitate.
Under opening credits, we get a kind of mini-biographical montage, reminding us of Lawrence’s career highlights — winning awards, starring in his Martin sitcom, winning a few more awards, co-starring with Will Smith and Eddie Murphy, going solo in his own Big Momma’s House — before mentioning rather less pleasant episodes.
Chief among the public embarrassments: Lawrence’s 1997 apprehension and hospitalization after he was found screaming incoherently at passing cars on a busy L.A. street. His arrest for brawling in a nightclub scuffle. And, perhaps most notoriously, his 1999 brush with death after collapsing while wearing heavy attire during a jog in 100-degree heat. Reports of these and other unfortunate incidents are introduced by actors hired to impersonate fatuous newscasters. They come across as impossibly smug as they air the dirty laundry of poor, put-upon Martin.
The mini-bio turns out to be a curtain-raiser for Lawrence’s one-man comedy show. Filmed over two days of performances at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat finds the comic actor returning to his stand-up roots, obviously enjoying the immediate feedback of loudly approving fans – and using the occasion to repeatedly remind one and all: “No one is immune to the trials and tribulations of life.” And some of us, apparently, are less immune than others.
After the image-buffing intro, you can’t help fearing Runteldat will be a total whitewash of Lawrence’s bad-boy behavior. That impression is only reinforced when, moments after he takes the Constitution Hall stage, Lawrence feels compelled to launch a foul-mouthed pre-emptive strike on critics. (Hey, I dunno, maybe he read the reviews for Black Knight and What’s the Worst That Could Happen?) Once he gets that out of the way, however, Lawrence gets serious about being funny.
For more than an hour, Lawrence offers frequently uproarious and often pointedly self-deprecating banter, using language that, for the most part, is unrepeatable in polite company. But trust me: A lot of this is very funny stuff about conjugal sex, corporal punishment and the dangerously liberating properties of Couvassier. There’s also a shockingly hilarious riff on Martin Luther King, Jr. Lawrence wonders what might have happened if once – just once! – the nonviolent activist would have gone medieval on some rock-throwing redneck.
The laughs continue when, somewhere around the 75-minute mark, Lawrence openly confronts his much-publicized brushes with the law. To his credit, he gleefully admits he was higher than a kite when he was caught running in and out of traffic. And he graphically describes how, after he collapsed in the heat – the result, he claims, of a too-strenuous exercise program – he spent much of his long recovery period re-learning how to walk, talk, urinate and defecate on his own.
Frankly, it’s difficult to be too critical of guy who jokes about the humiliation he felt after soiling his pants in full view of an attractive nurse. Trouble is, even when he’s telling the worst things about himself, Lawrence somehow manages to sound like someone making craven yet calculated appeals for sympathy. At the very end of the movie, we get a big picture of the star, accompanied by what appears to be a handwritten message: “We are one.” And maybe we are. But too much of Runteldat makes you wonder if Lawrence really wanted to scrawl: “Please love me!”
