Mark Reviews Movies: DOLEMITE IS MY NAME

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 10, 2019

The question, mostly left unanswered here, is whether Dolemite, the super-low-budget blaxploitation movie from 1975, makes no sense because it's supposed to be funny or because it's just a terrible movie. Dolemite Is My Name, which tracks comedian Rudy Ray Moore's creation of the character and the challenges of making and distributing a movie on the fly, has it both ways.

Yes, the original Dolemite is a terrible movie, made by people who, for the most part, didn't really know what they were doing. Yes, it's also supposed to be funny, although the filmmakers of this fictional behind-the-scenes look at the making of the 1975 movie have to cheat a bit to make that argument.

In a way, the cheating almost doesn't matter, because the end result is basically the same. Dolemite, the rhyming pimp who Moore invented for his stand-up routine, started as a gag, passed down to him from the tales and jokes he heard from at least one homeless man while living in Los Angeles.

For the character's big-screen debut, Moore envisioned a blaxploitation flick to end them all—with plenty of sex, nudity, violence, anger at corruption, and karate. The resulting movie is pretty awful, although it has its charms—most of them involving Moore's persona, the absurdity of the almost forgotten plot, the technical inefficiency on display in just about every scene, and just how apparent it is that the movie's star doesn't even possess a basic understanding of martial arts.

Seriously, if you haven't seen Dolemite (and it essentially is required viewing for this film, if only to witness that it exists and, additionally, to see how the filmmakers, in order to make their point, have shuffled what's from the original movie and what they add from its sequel), it's a trip. Whether Moore and his crew were sincere or joking in making the movie, it, like the character, remains a joke either way.

This film, which is pretty entertaining as a look at both Moore's intrepid entrepreneurship and the strange path to making a genuinely strange movie, leans into the jokes—of both the intentional and the accidental varieties. It's a comedy, in which Moore, played with an infectious hustler-like charm by Eddie Murphy, constantly finds himself at the end of his rope, only to crawl back upwards a bit by way of grit, necessity, and a lot of luck.

Rudy came to L.A. from Arkansas with dreams of making it big. Instead, he's an assistant manager at a record store, where the on-site radio DJ won't play the songs he recorded in the past, and the thankless emcee at a local club, where the audience talks over his jokes. He's about to call it quits, and then, after hearing a local homeless man make a rhyming joke about the toughest man anyone has ever known, Rudy has a flash of inspiration.

It's a character: a rhyming, flashily dressed man named Dolemite. His stand-up routine starts to revolve around the character. He becomes a massive hit with audience, and Rudy records a live album in his apartment. A record label notices the sales, and suddenly, he's touring across the South, hitting the charts, and recording even more material. This isn't enough for Rudy. He wants audiences across the country to come to him all at once, and the only medium for that is the movies.

The film really hits its stride as it moves into the production of that movie. He doesn't know a thing about making movies, but his friend, musician Ben Taylor (Craig Robinson), does know from the end credits that it takes a lot of people. He gives his long-time buddies some jobs, seeks out playwright Jerry Jones (Keegan-Michael Key) to write the script, gives his stand-up comic friend Lady Reed (Da'vine Joy Randolph) a significant role, and, by chance, runs into D'Urville Martin (a very funny Wesley Snipes), an actor whose ego definitely doesn't match the roles he has played. D'Urville is lured into the project with the job of director and the role of the villain, and a crew of film students, led by Nick (Kodi Smit-McPhee), will make sure the thing is lit well and shot on film.

It's pretty simple, as the production is a hastily assembled mess, in which a bunch of assumptions (Rudy's karate skills, the logic of the story's premise, and how much money the star has to borrow to keep film in the cameras) are proven wrong. The screenwriters, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, and director Craig Brewer aren't going for much more than the comedic potential of this, and in focusing on that, they succeed.

There's D'Urville's barely hidden frustration with what he's watching, and there's Rudy's insecurity when he realizes he's going to have be sexy for one scene. Instead, he makes it an elaborate gag (The raucous sex scene depicted here is actually from The Human Tornado, the first sequel to Dolemite, which is strange, considering that the original movie has its own inexplicably odd sex scene). Once the movie is in the can, there's another list of challenges—mainly in trying to get people to actually see the movie.

The lesson here (beyond giving reasons to praise Moore for his unceasing persistence and how his work laid the foundation for rap) is that, while making a movie is hard work, making a bad one, without even realizing it, and trying to sell it are even more difficult tasks. Dolemite Is My Name won't convince anyone that Dolemite is a good movie, but the film definitely gives you a better appreciation of how much has to be done to make a bad one.

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