MC Hammer’s Rise, Fall, Recovery

The story line is a show-business staple, one of fortunes made and then lost, of warnings not heeded and lessons learned painfully late.

It’s MC Hammer’s story too, and one that has already been well documented in everything from newspapers to court papers to “E! True Hollywood Stories.”

So is there anything left to tell of the one-time rapper’s $33-million rise and bankruptcy-filing fall? Hammer, a.k.a. Stanley Kirk Burrell, believes so, which may have been why he served as co-executive producer of tonight’s VH1 original movie “Too Legit: The MC Hammer Story” (airing at 9 p.m.).

A more objective answer to the question might be no, but that doesn’t mean the familiar components don’t generate a certain disaster-film appeal. The story breathlessly scans Hammer’s ascent from street urchin to chart-topper, and the jaw-dropping spending spree that follows is oddly compelling. “It’s only money,” he says at one point. “If we don’t spend it, we might drown in it.”

Actor Romany Malco plays Hammer with the requisite energy needed to make the frenetic dance scenes believable. He’s effective in the quieter moments too as a decent man perhaps done in by his own good intentions.

But Hammer (whose original recordings serve as soundtrack for the film, most notably on the breakthrough “U Can’t Touch This”) didn’t get involved in telling his story just so he can end up the has-been. Included is a coda that shows him back with his roots in the church, his family intact and his passion for life apparently undiminished.

Maybe the lessons weren’t learned too late after all.