Dolemite Is My Name (2019, Craig Brewer) (Patreon)

62/100

Inevitably plays like the black Ed Wood (as written and directed by white dudes), which is at once its strength and its weakness. Wood's oeuvre provided Alexander and Karaszewski with more ostentatious ineptitude to lovingly ridicule, and also featured built-in pathos thanks to Wood's relationship with Bela Lugosi during the latter's final years. Dolemite Is My Name suffers by comparison, being neither as hilarious nor as touching, but nonetheless creates a similarly warm surrogate-family vibe (despite employing a radically different aesthetic). Having watched Dolemite and The Human Tornado beforehand, I was initially distracted by Murphy making Moore just a slight variation on his standard fast-talking persona; superficial imitation has never much impressed me anyway, though, and it's always a pleasure to see a lazy aging movie star fully commit to the work as if every day on set were Throwback Thursday. (See also: De Niro.) Brewer keeps things moving along confidently—I'd forgotten what savvy pop instincts he has*—and the result is good fun, rarely seeming to aspire for more than that. I wound up being more interested in the details of how Moore's comedy albums were distributed than I was in the details of how his movies were shot, as the former are both more culturally specific and less familiar. At its heart, this story is about the improbable commercial resuscitation of an old folk archetype. That's noted for the record here, but ultimately downplayed (we don't even see Moore perform his Signifying Monkey routine in Dolemite); wish it had been a bit more prominent.

* Haven't seen Hustle & Flow since Sundance '05, but I still remember every beat of "Hard Out Here for a Pimp" being recorded, from Shug being startled by her own voice in playback to the camera pushing into the box fan's blades as they slowly stop spinning.