Stand up comedy requires a performer to walk out on stage alone, usually with no props or sets, to try to slay an audience. If you can survive that brutal Darwinian process, you can probably become a film actor, which is simply much easier work. Of the many careers that illustrate that principle, Eddie Murphy’s is one of the most vivid. Elsewhere on this site, I have made the case that he deserved a supporting actor Oscar nomination for his Peter Sellers-esque multi-character performance in the comedy Bowfinger. He shows even more range and talent in the 2019 biopic Dolemite is My Name.
The film is based — apparently pretty accurately — on the colorful life of Rudy Ray Moore, whom Murphy skillfully brings to life. Raised in poverty by a man who called him worthless, Moore is desperate to prove that verdict incorrect before the whole world. His anemic music and comedy career takes off when he begins to role play in his nightclub act as “Dolemite”, who dresses like a pimp., recites obscene rhyming lyrical jokes before hip-hop was cool, and records party albums that sell well with Black audiences. This still isn’t enough success for Moore, so he gambles everything he has on making an ultra-low budget blaxploitation movie starring — who else? — himself.
There are many great comic moments here, provided by Murphy as well as other performers who know how to draw a laugh, including Keegan Michael-Kay of Key and Peele fame, who plays a more intellectual co-movie scripter who initially wants to make a serious, elevated movie about “the Black experience” but gets drawn against his better judgement into Moore’s more playful and low brow aesthetic. Wesley Snipes is also fun as a drug and alcohol-addled minor blaxploitation star who agrees to direct while openly having no faith in the project or the people in it (this actually happened on the set).
But it’s not just a comedy. Murphy makes you really care about Moore and root for him. When he finally gets his very imperfect movie into a single theater for a make or break, four wall showing, and looks outside to see if anyone has turned up to watch it, I literally held my breath hoping for his success and watching his face to learn if this was his moment or a crushing defeat. Other dramatic punch comes from the friendship between Murphy’s Moore and Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s character, two people whom no one has ever believed in so they believe in each other.
This is also an entertaining movie for people who love movies. As the characters scratch for pennies to make their film in a condemned hotel with no power or water (again, this really happened) their resourcefulness and faith in themselves recalls Robert Rodriguez brilliant book about outsider film making, Rebel Without a Crew. The film also conveys the sensibility of blaxploitation, a genre for which as I described in my review of Across 110th Street, I have some sympathy, including how it was always at some level a self-aware parody of Black stereotypes.
Also to love: The way the movie brings alive the world of the 1970s urban America. This definitely includes Ruth E Carter’s award -winning costume design
In all, this is a superb movie as comedy, drama, and biopic, with a tour de force performance by the multi-talented superstar Eddie Murphy. In addition to making us laugh, Dolemite is My Name reminds us that for every man who achieves great things because his father told him he could, there’s one who achieves great things because his father told him he couldn’t.
p.s. Look fast for Snoop Dogg, paying tribute to the “Godfather of Rap”, Rudy Ray Moore.
All Good Movies 