Rudy Ray Moore (as I hope you all know) was a legendary figure in the worlds of regional comedy and cult movie-dom, a filthy stand-up comic who turned his “Dolemite” character into an unlikely blaxpoitation action hero, in spite of his offbeat looks and complete inability to convincingly fake a fight. Moore’s movies may not be technically competent or traditionally entertaining, but they’re first-rate outsider art, films thrown together with spit and Scotch tape by a performer who know exactly what his audience wanted, and was right.
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Moore’s cinematic output is so gonzo bugf*ck nuts that it’s a little disappointing to report that “My Name is Dolemite,” the new cinematic portrait of Mr. Moore (brought back to life by Eddie Murphy), is a fairly conventional biopic. But it’s put together with such energy and affection that the disparity is forgivable—were he still with us, Rudy would probably be thrilled that they turned his life into such a slick, “real” movie.
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The screenplay, by off-kilter biopic specialists Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (they also penned “Ed Wood,” “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” and “Man On The Moon”) opens during Moore’s many lean, frustrating years. He’s an assistant manager at a record store by day (“this was supposed to my temporary day job!”); at night, he squeezes himself into a white tux to tell corny one-liners as a nightclub emcee. “Hey man,” he asks a friend, “how’d my life get so small?” But one day, he has a revelation; as a neighborhood hobo wanders the store spouting old rhymes and insults, Rudy realizes he could take those jokes, shine them up, and make them the foundation of the character.
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One of the best “Dolemite” sequences lets us eavesdrop on that exercise, watching Rudy develop the character: the style, the voice, the clothes, the hair, the walk. In scenes like this, director Craig Brewer is doing what he did so well in his“Hustle & Flow”—he’s capturing the creative process, the visceral thrill of making popular art. Just as that film’s Djay recorded his demo in a makeshift living room recording studio, Dolemite records his first live album in his apartment, with an “audience” of friends and friends of friends. When no label will touch the result, Rudy shrugs and starts selling it out of the trunk of his car, taking it on the road for gigs on the Chitlin Circuit.
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His rise to celebrity, via that and a series of follow—up “party records,” occupies the first half or so of the film; the second begins with Rudy’s Christmas Day trip to the movies, where he sees a picture that “ain’t got no tittles, no funny, and no kung fu.” Reasoning (probably correctly) that “ain’t nobody gonna put me onscreen except for me,” he sets about making his first “Dolemite” movie.
Murphy knows a little something about these frustrations; he also produced “Dolemite Is My Name,” and reportedly spent a decade trying to get it made. When you watch him act it out, it’s not hard to see why it was so important to him to tell Moore’s story; his rise may not have mirrored Rudy’s (Eddie was a star by 19), but this was, after all, a nightclub comedian who wanted nothing more than to be a movie star. And in playing a man who was so clearly among his comic ancestors and influences, we see, for the first time in a long time, Murphy’s sheer joy of performance, the thing that made his early work in films like “48 HRS.” and “Beverly Hills Cop” so electrifying. But he’s also matured into a sturdy, reliable actor; he has two serious beats here, one playing the dozens against a picture of his abusive father and another weighing the impact of yet another rejection call, that are some of the best dramatic work he’s done.
Brewer surrounds him with a terrific ensemble, presumably lured by the double attraction of working with a legend on a film about a legend; all are good, but the scene-stealer is Wesley Snipes, who is clearly having an absolute blast as fussy, pretentious actor/director D’Urville Martin (Snipes has spent so much of the past couple of decades glowering and growling, it’s easy to forget what a gifted comic actor he can be). And the director marshals the right mixture of good-time energy and love for the art form; this is the second film in barely as many months to create a magical, moving moment out of the sheer act of turning on lights.
But lights are important. As he concocts this wild scheme to make his goofy little movie, Rudy looks up at the shaft of light coming out of the theater projector, and explains how everything can change for him “if I get up in that light”— a beautiful metaphor for the simultaneously permanent and ephemeral quality of movies. That idea also elegantly touches on the idea that not everyone gets to see themselves in that light, a nod to some rather timely ideas about representation.
Those ideas are later revisited with a good deal less subtlety, and the only nagging complaint this viewer can muster is that the picture considerably overstates its themes; there are just too many big moments about following your dreams and not taking no for an answer. The filmmakers also, disappointingly, ignore the long-running rumors about Moore’s own sexuality; that’s a shame, overlooking a significant opportunity to address the complexity of the Dolemite persona (and, well, Murphy’s too).
There are other sins of omission and simplicity that are sort of part for the course, and “Dolemite Is My Name” is, in many ways, the kind of by-the-books biopic that we’ve got more than enough of these days. But it’s so consistently entertaining and uproariously funny, with such engaging work by its star, it’s frankly hard to complain. [B+]
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