Dolemite Is My Name: Far out, man!

Dolemite Is My Name (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, and you'd better believe it, for nudity, crude sexual content and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.1.20

We love to learn about unlikely Hollywood success stories; they fuel Tinseltown’s image as the land of dreams and magic.

Writer/director Robert Rodriguez made his feature film debut, 1992’s El Mariachi, on a budget of only $7,000 (!) … half of which he raised via stipends earned as a participant in experimental clinical drug trials.

If clothes truly make the impersonation, Rudy Ray Moore (Eddie Murphy) must decide
whether his outfit is flashy enough to persuade a nightclub audience that he's a
streetwise pimp.

Steven Spielberg was only 17 when he began working as an unpaid clerical assistant in the Universal Studios editing department in the summer of 1964; four years later, his first professional short subject, Ambin’, impressed studio vice president Sidney Sheinberg enough to offer Spielberg a seven-year directing contract.

Rudy Ray Moore’s saga belongs in their company.

His unlikely career is profiled — more or less accurately — in Dolemite Is My Name, an unapologetically raucous and profane biographical comedy/drama from director Craig Brewer. The Netflix original boasts an impressively nuanced performance from star Eddie Murphy: an on-the-nose casting choice, given that — like Moore — he’s also an industry Comeback Kid, having risen from the ashes of his own imprudent career decisions.

Moore and his “Dolemite” persona are likely to be recognized or remembered only by cinema buffs who devoured 1970s blaxploitation flicks. As with the concurrent kung fu phase, many (most?) such films were made on microscopic budgets, and typified by shoddy special effects, clumsy scripting and atrocious acting. Fans couldn’t have cared less; such guerilla filmmaking inevitably came with an anti-establishment attitude and visceral degree of energy that made them, well, fun.

(If only in the sense of guilty pleasures.)

Scripters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski don’t shy from the eyebrow-raising coarseness of Moore’s personality, which is to be commended; there’s really no other way to depict his unlikely career with anything approaching authenticity. Murphy, in turn, radiates the charisma and unrelenting — often foolish — persistence with which Moore pursued his improbable dreams.

Murphy also isn’t afraid to embrace Moore’s physical limitations, including the pot belly that made him the world’s least likely film star.

But that comes later.

The Hangover, Part III: Out with a whimper

The Hangover, Part III (2013) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rating: R, for pervasive profanity and vulgar humor, some violence, a bit of drug content and some fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang

The third — and presumably concluding — entry in this franchise is nothing like its two predecessors.

Which is quite bizarre. And likely to irritate Wolfpack fans.

Having reluctantly agreed to follow Leslie Chow's (Ken Jeong, center right) scheme for
breaking into his own house, the Wolfpack members — from left, Phil (Bradley Cooper),
Alan (Zach Galifianakis) and Stu (Ed Helms) — study an elaborate model and prepare
to add breaking-and-entering to their already checkered résumés.

I appreciate writer/director Todd Phillips’ desire not to do the same ol’ stuff yet again; in that sense, it’s refreshing to see him try something different. But this particular case of “something different” utterly abandons all the hallmarks that made the two previous films so popular with arrested adolescents.

No abandoned babies or monkeys this time. No out-of-control bachelor parties or Bangkok benders. No chipped teeth, no tattoos. Nothing, in fact, that embarrasses, humiliates, physically tarnishes or debases these guys to any degree.

So what fun is that?

Nobody gets hung over, either ... not from booze, not from drugs, not from anything else.

I must note, in fairness, that a brief post-credits tag scene delivers everything that's missing from the film itself ... so don't depart too quickly. But that's much too little, far too late.

Which makes this film’s title a betrayal, along with its plotline. Phillips and co-scripter Craig Mazin have slipped their characters into the parallel universe of a heist comedy: a detour that, ironically, probably will be viewed as more satisfying to folks who prefer not to wallow in sleaze.

But wallowing in sleaze is the Wolfpack job description. Phillips’ detour here is akin to discovering that one’s most disreputable local fraternity has transformed itself into the epitome of Christian civility.

Well, no; things haven’t gotten that pure. This film’s R rating is well earned for pervasive profanity, because these guys still drop F-bombs the way most of us use descriptive adjectives. And yes, there’s a bit of violence and drug content. And one burst of nudity at a rather unexpected moment.

And a ghastly incident involving a giraffe. And a low freeway overpass.

All that said, though, this still feels like Wolfpack Lite.

Sparkle: A star is born

Sparkle (2012) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for dramatic intensity, drug use, violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang

Mara Brock Akil’s screenplay for this updated remake of Sparkle is laden with moments — plot developments, dialogue exchanges — that cut so close to Whitney Houston’s grim, off-camera misfortunes, that one cannot help wincing.

Thanks in no small part to her flashier dresses, Sister (Carmen Ejogo,
center) gets all the attention when she and siblings Dolores (Tika
Sumpter, left) and Sparkle (Jordin Sparks) perform as a Motown
"girl group." Unfortunately, Sister's reckless behavior is destined to
change this dynamic.

Indeed, it sometimes feels as if one is in a constant state of wince.

Many of these moments don’t even concern Houston’s character. But the mere knowledge that Houston embraced this project — her final film, and her first big-screen role since 1996’s The Preacher’s Wife — adds a layer of pathos that I’m sure director Salim Akil (the scripter’s husband) exploited quite deliberately.

The knowledge that Houston died during post-production of what was intended as a comeback role — without ever having seen the finished result — adds an additional layer of heartbreak that tragically unbalances this film.

Which is a shame, because — unlike many remakes — this new version of Sparkle has much to recommend it, starting with the radiant title performance by Jordin Sparks. Mara Brock Akil’s script moves the story down different paths than those taken by the 1976 original — still recognized as a very important entry in African-American cinema — and not merely because these events have been bumped forward roughly a decade.

Some shrewd socio-political content occasionally surfaces from the overly familiar “Golly, but I’d love to be a star” underdog saga.

But 19-year-old Sparkle (Sparks) isn’t really an underdog; she’s more of a plain-Jane house mouse. That is, at least, how she sees herself when standing alongside her older sisters: the confident and accomplished Dolores (Tika Sumpter), who yearns to become a doctor; and rebellious wild child Tammy, better known as Sister (Carmen Ejogo), back in the family home after a decadent big-city sojourn from which — we gather — she was lucky to escape.

The setting is Detroit in the late 1960s, and all that era involves: the civil rights movement, renegade fashions and hairstyles, and — most crucially, to this tale — the enormously popular music of Motown. Sparkle and her sisters live comfortably in a middle-class home held together by their mother, Emma (Houston), a single parent who once had her own ill-fated fling with the music scene, and has endured by becoming a conservative church-goer.

(We almost can imagine that Emma might have been one of the cast-offs from the original Sparkle, which was set in 1950s Harlem and sorta-kinda echoed the rise of Diana Ross and the Supremes.)