PLOT: Dave Chappelle put together a free block party in Brooklyn and the result is this exuberant mix of hip-hop, rap and comedy. The documentary is often laugh-out-loud funny and the music (which includes a reunion performance from the Fugees) is electrifying.

Dave Chappelle knows how to party. About 18 months ago, Chappelle organized a big concert for the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn. The filmed result of this high energy event is Dave Chappelle's Block Party, a friendly and hugely entertaining mix of humour and music. At the beginning the host himself says, "This is the concert I've always wanted to see."

Well, yes -- and who wouldn't? The concert Chappelle has put together includes performances (and chit-chat) from Erykah Badu, Mos Def, Common, Lauryn Hill, Jill Scott, The Roots, Wyclef Jean, Dead Prez and Kanye West, among others, and features the Fugees together for the first time in several years.

Chappelle sets the stage with odd and endearing bits of quiet comedy. He walks around his current neighborhood in Dayton, Ohio, inviting various locals to the concert in Brooklyn and distributing special gold tickets for the occasion.

He gets one of his acquaintances -- a white, middle-aged cashier from a Dayton convenience store -- to come along to the show, and he then convinces the band master of Ohio's Central State University marching band to let the entire band get on a bus for Brooklyn and the concert. And he drives through Brooklyn with a loudspeaker, yelling out the window that people should come.

The structure of Dave Chappelle's Block Party is what you might call meandering, but it works, and mostly through sheer force of will and humour on Chappelle's part. He leads the cameras into the local Salvation Army store to find furniture needed for the concert. Once there, he plays the piano and chats about the connection between musicians and comics.

He interviews people patiently waiting in line to get a bus to the block party, some of whom don't even know where they're going. The location was kept secret as long as possible, but just the promise of hip-hop and rap was enough to get the fans out.

(Those thrilled fans and their enthusiasm for the concert event are an attractive element in the film. Dave Chappelle's Block Party is wildly celebratory and the excitement is contagious.)

BOTTOM LINE: Chappelle makes fun of himself and everybody else in Dave Chappelles' Block Party, but just under the laughs is an interesting document about community and music-as-social-glue. This is 100 minutes well spent.

(This film is rated 14-A)