Eddie Murphy’s star rises again in ‘Dolemite’
Never underestimate the power of a dream — or the talent of the much-maligned Eddie Murphy. That’s the takeaway from Craig Brewer’s “Dolemite Is My Name,” a funny, foulmouthed biopic in which the writers of “Ed Wood” serve up another helping of a delusional filmmaker casting reason to the wind in creating a cinema classic.
Well, “classic” might be too strong a word; “legend” is closer to the truth. And I’m not just talking about the 1975 Blaxploitation joint “Dolemite,” but another golden oldie in Murphy, a comedian whose career had faded into irrelevance until Brewer (“Hustle & Flow”) came along to resurrect the “Daddy Day Care” star by mercifully returning him to his R-rated roots. The result is a smorgasbord of vulgarity, with F-bombs and euphemisms for male and female genitalia dominating a script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski that’s pee-your-pants hilarious.
That’s just the surface.
Deeper down resides something even more terrific about guts, determination and a refusal to take “no” for an answer.
It’s about drive and having the fortitude to defy all odds in chasing a vision held by not just one man, but an equally ignored group of talents gathering the will to lift themselves up right along with him. The era is the mid-1970s, but it retains a relevance to a modern film industry tending to box non-whites into roles of domestics and menial laborers, both onand off-screen.
Now, as then, to be a star you must buck the system, which is exactly what part-time comedian and full-time record store flunky Rudy Ray Moore determines to do once he brings his pioneering style of funny to the masses, first via stage and recordings and then the ultimate: film.
There’s a lot of Murphy in Moore and vice-versa, making for something magical, as the two dynamic personalities merge into one. It’s a beautiful thing, too.
You might even say cathartic, as the character becomes a stand-in for anyone who’s ever had a dream. We may not aspire to become “the godfather of rap,” but it’s no different than wanting to be the best salesman, the best broker, the best techie or even best dad.
It’s all about believing in yourself and creating your own breaks, which is what Moore does in transforming into his preening-pimp alter-ego, Dolemite.
Although Murphy is a solid decade older than Moore was in the early 1970s, you buy fully into what he’s selling in bringing an icon of the African American community vibrantly to life.
It begins where the character Dolemite began, at the famous Dolphins of Hollywood record store, a South L.A. emporium where a member of the local homeless community wanders in. Moore’s bosses want the gentleman tossed out on his keister.
But Rudy sees the broken man’s true value. And that is in the stories he and his fellow vagrants recite about an uncouth pimp named Dolemite.