Chris Rock’s directorial debut, “Head of State,” is delightfully hilarious yet awkwardly toothless. The paper-thin plot is not without occasional tears, as it proves obvious that Mr. Rock is clinging to his stand-up roots while slowly acclimating to the more highbrow demands of cinematic satire.

In the film, the presidential candidate of an unspecified party dies when his plane crashes into the plane of his running mate. With the election nearing and a loss a foregone conclusion, the nameless party decides to appoint an obscure Washington, D.C., alderman, Mays Gilliam (Rock), to run for the high office. The party’s thinking is that by nominating a black man, they will lose this election but enter the next election with minority votes already locked up.

Don’t strain yourself too hard trying to figure out what party it really is. This is a Hollywood movie. Gilliam is the good guy. All good guys in Hollywood movies are Democrats (except for pacifist-anarchist-communists like Michael Moore).

Think that was a cheap shot? Sadly, it is well founded compared to the political statements made by “Head of State.” Rather than engaging in actual governmental satire, Rock makes straw-man arguments with no realistic bearing. For example, Gilliam’s opponent, Vice President Lewis (Nick Searcy, “One Hour Photo”) ends all of his speeches with “God bless America. And only America.”

In one of the film’s scenes of heightened tension, Gilliam gathers the courage to assault Lewis for this recurring line of absurdity. Unfortunately, there is not a single viable politician in existence today, short of Pat Buchanan, who advocates such an isolationist stance. In other words, the movie is satirizing nonexistent views.

So whereas Warren Beatty’s “Bulworth” used a similar plot line to create intelligent political satire, Rock is left with a film that can only function as a stand-alone piece of comedy-infused fiction with even less actual bearing than his old stand-up routines.

Fortunately, the humor is decent and frequent enough to carry the film. Whether it be the saga of a government-trained “super-whore,” the absurdity of two planes crashing into each other or the idea of political music videos, “Head of State” keeps the chuckles coming.

As a freshman director, Rock has some issues with the craft. The film suffers continuity issues as it storms in one part of a city and not in another. The area represented as the worst part of Washington, D.C., does not appear menacing enough to be deserving of the title.

And the film is sometimes too fast-paced, refusing to slow down and take the time to fully develop comic situations. This flaw, however, seems to feed into the straw-man strategy of the film — if some characters were fully developed, it wouldn’t be as easy to target them with phony satire.

It seems as though Rock wants those satires to be real and gripping but simply does not take enough pointed shots at reality to hit a non-straw target.

In “Federalist 10,” James Madison (as Publius) writes, “However small the republic may be, the representatives must be raised to a certain number in order to guard against the cabals of a few.” Since Rock has decided to take on the government through a lowly representative in his freshman directorial attempt, it seems only apt that the lesson be summed up in Federalist terms: “However small the film may be, the satires must be raised to a certain number in order to guard against the failures of a few.”

Grade: BC