Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was … review – a star is born again | Comedy

It’s fairly the doc, this new Jamie Foxx particular, wherein the Oscar- and Grammy-winner opens up concerning the “thriller sickness” that just about killed him. You might view it because the 56-year-old’s hymn to God, his followers (and himself, frankly) as, trembling of lip, he expresses gratitude for this second shot at life. Or because the ravening Hollywood ego made manifest in standup and track. Or as a case research within the confusions of recent masculinity. Any which method, it definitely makes an impression.

What renders the present (clunkily titled What Had Occurred Was …) newsworthy is its account of the stroke Foxx had in April 2023, which eliminated him from public life and prompted rumours he had died. In Foxx’s account, it was a dying, of kinds. Utilizing a wheelchair, unable to wipe his bottom, Foxx needed to slay the outdated, egotistical Jamie so a humbler one may heal and transfer on. Such have been the teachings of a no-nonsense Chicago nurse who shepherded the famous person to restoration, with the assistance of his sister, his daughters, his followers’ prayers – and the Lord and Saviour who orchestrated all this, too.

The stroke, we study, was a divine punishment for Foxx’s poor church attendance. Fortunately, Jamie now so repenteth of his sins that this set morphs right into a non secular service by the top, its host main his flock in a godly singalong. Earlier than that, there are lengthy, lingering closeups of him breaking down in tears (“Please, Lord, let me get via this”) and swaggering standup about how “Jamie motherfucking Foxx … don’t want no therapists”. Typically the switchbacks between the numerous faces of recent machismo are dizzying, as our host pivots from sobbing on stage together with his 14-year-old daughter to cracking smart about now not having intercourse with “white women”.

What’s plain, lastly, is that Foxx has been shaken by his expertise – and that he stays a rare entertainer, whether or not that’s as a pianist, singer, mimic (with nice impersonations of Trump, Denzel Washington, Jay-Z and extra) or raconteur. Overblown and religiose it could be, however this jaws-of-death account is heart-on-sleeve and arduous to take your eyes off.