New sitcom ‘Young Rock’ is much better than you’d expect.
You can smell “vanity project” all over “Young Rock,” Dwayne Johnson’s autobiographical sitcom about growing up in a wrestling family. These things almost inevitably give off a bad odor.
But the Rock is cooking up something different here. His NBC comedy follows the athleteturnedmoviestar’s winning recipe of charm, wit, goodwill and just enough selfsatire. Throw in a little willingness to address uncomfortable truths, and the project’s aftertaste of egotism doesn’t stick long on the palate.
Using a framing device of Johnson running for president in 2032, the show is a series of carefully curated memories the candidate recounts to Randall Park, coyly playing an obsequious TV interviewer who’s nonetheless on the lookout for any scandalous slip his smooth subject may make. Johnson and Park are a terrific comic pairing, by the way, both verbally and with more funny faces than you can raise a People’s Eyebrow at.
To illustrate the life lessons he’s peddling, Haywardborn Johnson repeatedly goes back to three periods in his youth that get dramatized. When he was 10 and called Dewey, he’s played by Adrian Groulx. His dad Rocky Johnson ( Joseph Lee Anderson) was a pro wrestler in Hawaii, performing for famous promoter Lia Mavia (Ana Tuisila), who was Dewey’s grandma on his mother Ata’s (Stacey Leilua) side.
By the time Dwayne’s 15 and played by a mustachioed Bradley Constant, his family’s fortunes had taken a downturn, and he was shoplifting clothes and being mistaken for a narc at school in Bethlehem, Pa. Uli Latukefu is Rock from 18 to 20, when he played football for the University of Miami.
There are morals to learn in every period and a lot of love spread around. Rocky may not be the best father, provider or truth teller, but he’ll always be a great showman and a decent guy at heart. As TV moms often are, Ata is a saint, but sometimes in surprisingly complex ways; Leilua is quite magnetic to watch here, and while everyone in “Young Rock” is pretty perfectly cast, her role, the least showy, is the most compelling surprise.
NBC provided the first two and the sixth episodes to review. The pilot’s title, “Working the Gimmick,” could also be the series’ overriding motto. It’s where little Dwayne is first instructed by his extended family of pro wrestlers — honorary uncles the Wild Samoans, Iron Sheik, Andre the Giant and others — that you’ve got to constantly keep up the “show” if you’re going to get anywhere. It’s a lesson Johnson clearly internalized and exploited with unprecedented success, and even though the series surely fictionalizes events that inspired him, these glimpses into the seeds of the Rock’s act are intriguing and often fun.
Working the gimmick is also pro wrestling code for the taboo Fword: fake. Deceit runs rampant through “Young Rock,” with both positive and negative outcomes that lend the series a lifelike feel. Which isn’t to say that the writers refrain from the usual sitcom misunderstandings and sentimental ploys. They just work them better than usual, such as in episode six when 10yearold Dewey spends an afternoon with Andre (portrayed pretty accurately, as I recall from my occasional “Wrestle-Mania” watching days, by NFLer Matthew Willig), learning about what it’s like to be an outsider.
“Young Rock” is, of course, inclusive by nature, and it’s good to see a show where none of that feels the least bit forced. Nahnatchka Khan (who directed Park in the winning “Always Be My Maybe”) and Jeff Chiang are the key creatives here, and they both hail from “Fresh Off the Boat” and “American Dad!”
But “Young Rock” is the unmistakably grown Rock’s baby. He comes off well at every age in it, even when he’s teasing us with his bad boy past. It’s all a conceit from someone who has every reason to be conceited. We love him for it, we’ll probably love him in this and we’re gonna love President Rock too, whether he’ll be playing that role in the White House or in a sequel to this show.