Speaking of material, later on in the movie, the D-Man is hounded by adoring “fans” that demand some spoken word rap rhymes from him. “I’m not accustomed to doing shows on the street,” Dolemite declares, “I am opening in town this weekend and I appreciate it if you Brothers get together and get out and see me.”
So now Doley does public appearances for money? He’s a comedian/proto-rap artist AND a kung-fu pimp?
Here’s where the movie blurs the line between fiction and reality. Badly. Rudy Ray Moore was a popular comedian in the late 1960s and ’70s. His 1970 debut comedy album “Eat Out More Often” (Rudy sure loves him some double entendres!) made it into the top 25 on the Billboard Charts. So it would make sense for him to incorporate his famous rhyming raps into his first movie. Unfortunately the rap routines just don’t mesh with the rest of the movie. The movie crawls to a halt every time he performs them. He changes character too. The bland, unemotional and visibly camera shy actor attempting to play Dolemite becomes the bombastic rude-and-crude force of nature that is Rudy Ray Moore. If only his acting in the rest of the movie were as dynamic as it is in the stand-up routines.
The insistent fans coax some rappin’ rhymes from the D-Man:
“One beautiful day
In the merry month of May
The great ship Titanic sailed away…”
‘In the very month of May’? Let me just check my stash of old newspapers from 1912:
And let’s zoom in to get a closer lookyloo at the date:
April! Doley, the Titanic sunk in April, you non-fact-checking, silly hat-wearin’ mutha-FUCKAH! (See? I can do it, too!) Check yo facts, brothah! I’m all for poetic license and all, but here’s a fool who should have his poetic license revoked! And to think I thought Vanilla Ice’s rhymes were weak…
It’s pretty much all downhill from here, as the “plotline” gets more convoluted and undecipherable. We’re introduced to numerous flamboyant characters that seem to have little or nothing to do with the plot at all, including:
Reverand Gibbs.
A feather duster-waving preacher who spreads the Gospel of “Kill Whitey” while banging whale-sized women. Thankfully not at the same time.
The Mayor.
A Jon Lovitz impersonator with a taste for “Brown Sugar.” And showing his bare ass to the camera. Just be thankful I left the details vague.
Blakely.
An undercover FBI agent who uncovers the Mayor’s secret deal with Willie Green. He then guns down the Mayor, guns down Willie Green, brings the crooked cracker cops to justice, and shuts down Dolemite’s prostitution racket. Could someone please tell me why they needed to let Dolemite out of prison to prove his own innocence, if this Blakely guy was going to do all the work for him?
The Creeper AKA The Hamburger Pimp.
A junkie. Probably played by a real junkie. Think Bubs from “The Wire” as a wacky comedic foil.
The plotline ain’t the only thing going downhill. Even the Boom Mic Operator’s work gets noticeably worse:
The Hamburger Pimp WALKS INTO the boom mic! They don’t even need to record sound for a transition shot like this! Dwayne must be taking a nap.
“WTF Dwayne! Now your head’s in the shot! I thought I told you to get the fuck off my set! Who keeps giving him that boom?”
The Boom Mic Operator’s head remains in that shot for an entire minute.
The boom mic appears so often that the Boom Mic Operator should have got second billing after Rudy Ray Moore. Let’s just say that if you were to make a drinking game based on the number of times the boom appears in a shot, you’d probably die of alcohol poisoning.
The film more or less ends with a poorly-choreographed martial arts fight sequence pitting Willie Green’s goons against Dolemite’s kung-fu sex kittens. This scene is really bad. 1970s Bollywood bad. Queen Bee is shot in the back by a baddie’s bullet. And neither Dolemite nor anyone else reacts to her apparent death. We don’t see her for the rest of the movie, so it’s pretty safe to assume she’s dead.
Sure Queen Bee’s not all that easy on the eyeballs, but she’s the one who kept Doley’s business afloat all those years he was in prison. And she’s the reason he was let out of prison in the first place. Even from a character who doesn’t really show any emotion, you’d think Dolemite would still have some sort of reaction!
The fight between Doley and Willie Green is so poorly lit I have no idea who’s hitting who or who’s winning.
I don’t know what’s going on. And I don’t care. I just want this nightmare to end!
And like I mentioned earlier, FBI Agent Blakely shows up at the end, more or less single-handedly defeats all the bad guys, and puts Dolemite out of business.
So for all his efforts and proud posturing, Dolemite didn’t really accomplish anything on his own. Likewise, for all the filmmakers efforts they didn’t really accomplish anything either. The whole experience feels like a backyard movie. Which it probably is. I know this movie is an intended spoof of the blaxploitation genre, but you know a spoof is a failure when all its laughs are at the expense of the filmmakers themselves, and not their intended target of ridicule. They really should have fired that Boom Mic Operator!
My Score
½ a Boom Mic out of 5.
Dolemite is a rarefied cine-mess that baffles critics and audiences alike with its complete and utter incompetence.
FUN FACTS
Dolemite miraculously managed to make enough at the box office to spawn several sequels, including The Human Tornado AKA Dolemite II (1976), and the direct-to-video entries Shaolin Dolemite (1999) and The Return of Dolemite (2002). I don’t plan to watch any of ‘em.
Rudy Ray Moore would later be hailed as the “Godfather of Rap”, being one of the first performers to use rhymes and excessive profanity to tell urban stories. Dr. Dre sampled Moore’s material in his 1992 album “The Chronic.” For all my snarky criticism, Moore’s material managed to inspire a whole music genre.
The name “Dolemite” is a misspelling of “dolomite”, a brittle mineral, which in its pure state is WHITE in color.
This reviewer is the most lowdown, disgusting, no business having,insecure motherfucker to ever live; writing such a damn fool review.