Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat

The comic and star of film and television fires on all cylinders in this stand-up performance at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. Playfully profane innuendo and graphic gestures abound as Lawrence riffs on sex, love, race, drugs and family life, and even reflects on his legal and health troubles., Martin Lawrence is one of America’s top black comedians, spoken of in the same breath as the late Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy when they were at the height of their stand-up powers, and he’s also appeared in films including Big Momma’s House and Bad Boys. But he’s also suffered setbacks in his personal life, from being arrested with a loaded gun at an airport to being accused by his co-star in the TV show Martin of sexual harassment. In this outstanding film of his stand-up routine, he confronts his demons and those who demonise him, as well as veering off to his favourite subject: women, and how hard they are to live with. And ‘rundletat’ is short for ‘run and tell that’., After a string of box-office failures, actor-comedian Martin Lawrence bares his soul — and tells the stories behind some of his more troubling run-ins with the police, the media, and the movie industry — in this feature-length stand-up performance film. Interspersing some behind-the-scenes documentary footage with a live recording of his packed-to-the-rafters concert at Washington, D.C.’s Constitution Hall in January, 2002, Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat returns Lawrence to his roots: broad, bawdy, expletive-laden, slang-influenced monologues. But this time, the comedian’s work takes on a personal slant, as he addresses the incident where he brandished a gun in a busy Los Angeles street during the filming of A Thin Line Between Love and Hate (1996), as well as the severe health problems he suffered just before cameras were ready to roll on what would be one of his biggest successes, Big Momma’s House (2000). Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat was produced by MTV Films, the company responsible for bringing 2000’s four-man stand-up documentary Original Kings of Comedy to the screen; unlike Lawrence’s previous performance film, the unrated You So Crazy, Runteldat was granted a “R” rating by the MPAA.