Instead of watching Scorcese's latest white boy crime-wank movie I checked out
Dolemite Is My Name, an Eddie Murphy vehicle based on the life of African American stand-up comic turned movie star
Rudy Ray Moore that seems both a natural fit for Murphy, and a natural choice for the biopic treatment, and while it hits
all the usual notes, something is a bit off about it and it was only near the end that I twigged that it's not a biopic of Moore, but of Dolemite, Moore's onstage persona.
When the movie starts, Moore isn't a young, gifted comedian but a flabby, over-the-hill journeyman, and his big break doesn't come from a producer taking a chance but from Moore stealing material from hobos and freeloading off his aunt to publish a record. The film's story isn't that Moore was a genius but that he got lucky with the right material at the right time, and then never actually became any better as an artist or saw out any grand vision, his victory comes from finding a shallow validation in his cult status among an African-American community literally abandoned to the inner cities by white people (as explained in a brutally-unsubtle minor turn by Bob Odenkirk doing his best not to channel Saul Goodman while delivering what are clearly Saul Goodman's lines).
Biopics are tricky because if the subjects are alive or have a legacy maintained by an estate, the movies tend to be flattering and safe, but this isn't flattering at all. Moore certainly doesn't come across as a
bad person - he doesn't do drugs, beat his wife or abandon his kids - but he also doesn't come across as particularly interesting or even that good in his chosen profession, he's just a man who succeeded through the work and/or indulgence of others with more talent or wit but who in the end gave back more than what he took by ultimately becoming a part of the African-American folklore he cynically stripmines to achieve success.
The pacing seems a bit off, but it's otherwise quite enjoyable. If nothing else it was nice being reminded that Wesley Snipes can actually act and doesn't just parody the tough guy act he was peddling in the 1990s.
