Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat

This live concert film by comedy's bad boy Martin Lawrence finds the performer using incidents from his life as material for his act on his recent Runteldat tour (“runteldat” being Lawrence's response to his own truth-telling, as in “run and tell that to the media). Filmed during Lawrence's final two shows of the tour in Washington, D.C., the movie spends an hour on Lawrence's mostly tired and very profane observations about life, aging (he's 36 now, as he points out), women (many of the same old misogynistic cracks about their orifices and odors), and child-rearing (whoopings are good) before getting to the stuff we really came to hear: his comments about his run-ins with the law and the media (the result of running around in traffic while waving a gun), as well as his recent health crisis (he was comatose for three days after passing out while jogging while wearing heavy clothing). Of course the standard-bearer for this kind of confessional film is the brilliant Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip, in which the comedian mines material from his heart attack and the incident in which he set himself on fire while freebasing. Lawrence indeed describes the headline-grabbing events in his life but you never really feel that it is a true confessional. Lawrence (after entering the stage amid a scrim of smoke following a short biographical film is played) declares that he wants to tell his side of his life story before E! True Hollywood Story does. Yet very little of the material is revelatory or digs very deeply into Lawrence's troubles. He returns repeatedly to the same observation -- “No one is immune to the trials and tribulations of life” -- as if that were enough to explain his scandalous behavior. Compared with the fresh wit and finely observed social comedy of Lawrence's previous concert film You So Crazy (one of the all-time top-grossing comedy concert films), Runteldat is a disappointing misfire. Throughout the film, Lawrence frequently repeats his philosophy of life: “Ride this motherfucker 'til the wheels fall off.” Given that analogy, Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat breaks down before it gets out of the driveway.