Foxx Fires Up His Stand-Up Self

Jamie Foxx, riding high on a steady string of high-profile movie roles, returns to his stand-up roots tonight with his first HBO comedy special in eight years, “I Might Need Security” (10:15 p.m.).

A graduate of TV’s “In Living Color,” the 34-year-old Foxx has enhanced his marquee value by co-starring in such recent films as the Oscar-nominated “Ali,” “Any Given Sunday” and “Booty Call.”

In tonight’s program, he hits the stage running, revving up the audience at Oakland’s Paramount Theater with an old-school call-and-response rap and a generous flash of his famously sculpted abs. As winner of the Bay Area Black Comedy Competition more than a decade ago, Foxx gets a welcome-back reception worthy of a conquering hero. But the hourlong performance that follows works a bit harder at maintaining the energy than the focus.

Foxx offers profanity-driven insights on post-9/11 America that hit the mark more often than not, and then it’s celebrity-skewering time. Refreshingly oblivious to whatever show-biz bridges he might be burning, Foxx runs through and runs down a who’s who list of notables, including Whitney Houston (“I’m not saying she’s a crackhead, but she’s crack-ish”), Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpsonand Jennifer Lopez.

Comments on a well-publicized scuffle with “Any Given Sunday” co-star LL Cool J are remarkable in their candor (“He hit me into another movie,” admits Foxx), as are his confessions on a meeting with Prince.

The special tends to flatten out thereafter, including a segment on filming “Ali” in Africa that presents observations similar to and more crisply conceived years ago by Richard Pryor in the concert film “Live on the Sunset Strip.”

Nevertheless, Foxx’s return to stand-up is a welcome one, and his next trip onstage just might prove as well-honed as those abs.