Dolemite Is My Name (2019)
Directed by Craig Brewer
The story of Rudy Ray Moore, who created the iconic big screen pimp character Dolemite in the 1970s.
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Like “Ed Wood” and “The Disaster Artist,” it gets its juice from its central figure, a driven, even delusional creative force who doesn’t know good from bad and doesn’t care.
Dolemite Is My Name was written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the screenwriting duo who have a knack for this sort of biopic, based on their past credits, which include Ed Wood, Man on the Moon, and Big Eyes.
In the tradition of such films as “Ed Wood” (the gold standard in this particular niche genre), “The Disaster Artist” and “Bowfinger,” which starred Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy, “Dolemite Is My Name” finds rich material in a story about a filmmaker who refuses to let things like no discernible talent get in the way.
But the film at hand might be better understood as the latest love letter to cult favorites and camp icons by screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who previously wrote the screenplays for Ed Wood , the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon , and the Margaret Keane legal drama Big Eyes .
Toward the end of the film, however, the director inserts just one brassy montage set to a ’70s funk hit too many, and you begin to wish that screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski had approached Moore’s life with the same focus as in their Oscar-winning script for Ed Wood (1994).
A perfect blend of the acting of one of singular voices in comedy, the writers behind Ed Wood and The People Vs.
The cast and crew is made up of Rudy's friends and a host of others that Rudy manages to talk into making the film one way or another, including actor D'Urville Martin (played by Wesley Snipes of “Blade”) who is lured into the project by Rudy offering him the coveted creative job of director.
Beyond Murphy as Moore, we also have: Da’Vine Joy Randolph (TBS’ People of Earth ) as his performance partner Lady Reed; Tituss Burgess (Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt ) as his hapless assistant manager and later assistant director; Keegan-Michael Key ( Keanu ) as a very patrician playwright hilariously engaged to write the decidedly non-patrician screenplay; Wesley Snipes – the eternal Blade – as the alcoholic D’Urville Martin, an established blaxploitation star hired as the movie’s director; and many more, all of whom shine.
Set way back in the 1970s when “blaxploitation” films like “Shaft” (1971) “Superfly” (1972) and “Foxy Brown” (1974) were popular with inner city audiences, Rudy Ray Moore (played by Eddie Murphy) is a struggling singer and stand up comic whose career seems to be going nowhere.
The fact that it’s a Hollywood story, replicated just a handful of times through movie history, a lone print of an “I spent everything on this” movie finding success — “A Fistful of Dollars,” “Night of the Living Dead” “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Deep Throat” followed similar paths — just makes this that much more mutha-f—–g adorable.
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Snipes—who looks like a day hasn’t passed since White Men Can’t Jump, and it’s just not fair—hasn’t had an opportunity to shine like this in decades, and this film marks his grand return to form as well.
Ya sean dramas que exaltan la añoranza de las viejas glorias ( El ocaso de una vida, 1950), tramas que plasman las emociones generadas por el arte ( Cinema Paradiso , 1988) e incluso homenajes a sus más fallidos representantes que de algún modo lograron destacar en la dura industria creativa ( Ed Wood , 1994), el cine dentro del cine es fascinante por sus historias, así como por lo que representa: la lucha máxima en la industria de los sueños.