"Dolemite is My Name" is a Winner

It's easy to draw comparisons between "Dolemite is My Name" and "The Disaster Artist" or "Ed Wood," other notable chronicles of notorious amateur directors, especially since "Dolemite is My Name" shares the same screenwriters and many plot elements with "Ed Wood." However, I think the better comparison is with "Dolemite is My Name" director Craig Brewer's earlier film "Hustle and Flow." Both are about black men with dreams of stardom, who battle their way through adversity to success, with a little help from their friends. The hero of "Hustle and Flow" was fictional, but "Dolemite is My Name" is based on the life of a very real person, Rudy Ray Moore, who gives Eddie Murphy a fantastic comeback role.

We first meet Moore as a struggling performer, managing a record store as a day job, and emceeing for bigger acts at a Los Angeles nightclub. After a long string of failures, he finally hits upon a winning idea: he creates the persona of Dolemite, an exuberantly profane and vulgar pimp, who knows karate, and appeals to black audiences. He starts to see success as a comic, sharing his success with friends Jimmy Lynch (Mike Epps), Ben Taylor (Craig Robinson), Theodore Toney (Tituss Burgess), and discovering newcomer Lady Reed (Da'Vine Joy Randolph). However, it's still an uphill battle for Moore as he fights against censors, racial prejudice, and the entertainment establishment of the times. Moore keeps getting more ambitious ideas like recording his own comedy album, and eventually sets his sights on making his very own "Dolemite" movie.

"Dolemite is My Name" is a long film, and a little unwieldy since the first half is all about Rudy Ray Moore's rise to fame as a comic, and the second half shifts gears to chronicle the making of the 1975 blaxploitation film "Dolemite." The film's production is eventful and entertaining enough to sustain a whole feature by itself, with a Moore wrangling a snooty director, D'Urville Martin (Wesley Snipes), a high-minded screenwriter Jerry Jones (Keegan-Michael Key), and a crew comprised mostly of UCLA film students, lead by Nicholas von Sternberg (Kodi Smit-McPhee). However, the second half works because the first half sets up Moore and all these other characters, and ensures that our sympathies are with them. Moreover, it establishes the stakes of the production and everything that Moore and his friends are up against as outsiders to the movie business and an independent production.

The main event, however, is Eddie Murphy's performance. He's mostly playing a variation of his usual screen persona, but a little older, a little heavier, and a little more heartfelt. He is so much fun here, summoning up seemingly endless amounts of energy to sell the standup scenes, but also endearing and vulnerable when he gets nervous before a sex scene or has a heart-to-heart with Lady Reed. He makes it clear that he knows the Dolemite persona is all pretend, but the outrageousness of the character seems to propel his own ambitions and his own confidence. There's so much affection in the portrayal of Moore, and for the whole era of blaxploitation and underground comedy that he was a part of. The filmmakers tying Moore's struggles to the race representation issues is very on the nose, but handled well enough that it's all very uplifting and goes down easy.

I watched the original "Dolemite" after watching "Dolemite is My Name," and I'm glad I waited. Without the context of the biopic, it would have been easy to write off "Dolemite" for its amateurish production, gratuitous content, and over-the-top story. Frankly, I thought it was pretty terrible, but the movie wasn't made for me, and that's all right. I can appreciate all the effort and the daring that went into the creation of "Dolemite," and the importance of the film to black cinema history. As for "My Name is Dolemite," it's one of those rare films about the making of a film that's better than its subject matter. It's howlingly funny. It's genuinely touching. It gives Eddie Murphy a perfect opportunity to shine once again.

Surprise, surprise, this is currently the top contender for my favorite feel-good film of the year. And maybe just my favorite of the year.

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