Dolemite Is My Name (2019)
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Dolemite Is My Name Movie Review
Dolemite Is My Name is a 2019 biographical comedy film directed by Craig Brewer and starring Eddie Murphy. It’s a very trivial movie.
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“Dolemite is my name,
and fuckin’ up motherfuckers is my game!“
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This biopic is about a famous Blaxploitation performer Rudy Ray Moore who develops an outrageous character named Dolemite and becomes an underground sensation and star of a kung-fu, anti-establishment film. The movie thus belongs in the camp of films such as ‘Ed Wood’ or even ‘The Disaster Artist’, that is films about B-movie stars and their silly or trashy movies.
But unlike those other two movies, this one doesn’t explore its themes all that well, and it just becomes a fun romp, and nothing more than that. For a film about Blaxploitation, it’s way too thinly surfaced, and never at all tackling the very complicated nature of these particular films, especially in today’s politically correct climate. There was a strong opportunity here to make a comment about the importance of those films or their racism, but the filmmakers simply opted to not delve into any serious issues here, which was super annoying to me.
The movie is very well acted for sure. Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Wesley Snipes are both quite memorable themselves, but it is Eddie Murphy who killed it, especially comedically as his role isn’t particularly dramatic. But he is very charismatic and amusing during the whole movie, and this could prove to be a big comeback for him as it was well orchestrated as such.
Dolemite Is My Name is also pretty fun at times, it’s actually much more entertaining than many other biopics out there. It has that trashy, foul-mouthed, B-actor charm to it that I really gravitated toward. I really liked the dialogue through and through, and some of the lines were very funny.
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But the movie isn’t well paced at all as it’s quite long, not well structured and it lacked momentum, especially dramatically and emotionally. It’s too much a comedy, and not enough a drama as it lacked levity in its entirety. The direction is also quite weak, but the production design and attention to detail are quite solid.
Dolemite Is My Name is very well acted by Eddie Murphy, it features strong dialogue and it’s a pretty entertaining biopic which is quite funny at times too. But it lacked depth, and it did not have anything meaningful or interesting to say about Blaxploitation movies. Thus, it turned out to be a pretty fun, but utterly frivolous project.
