Eddie Murphy triumphs as blaxploitation legend

“Dolemite Is My Name,” a breezy, fact-based account of underground comedy star and unlikely action movie hero Rudy Ray Moore, hands Eddie Murphy his juiciest leading role in years. It’s a tonic to see him back on his game, mixing it up, in his slightly removed, top-billed way, with Keegan-michael Key, Wesley Snipes, Craig Robinson, Mike Epps and the rest of director Craig Brewer’s ripe ’n’ ready ensemble.

The appeal of Murphy’s long-gestating vehicle couldn’t be simpler: By playing a real underdog who became a huge influence on countless rappers and comics coming up behind him, Murphy is once again in comfortable, confident performance territory. He is his old self as a performer, and though he will soon revisit characters from past hits (“Coming to America 2” and “Beverly Hills Cop 4” are on the way), “Dolemite Is My Name” gives us something old and something new.

Moore created the Eddie Murphy in “Dolemite Is My Name.” "Dolemite Is My Name." Directed by Craig Brewer.

MPAA rating: R (for pervasive language, crude sexual content, and graphic nudity)

Running time: 1:58

Now showing at the Drexel Theatre and Gateway Film Center

swaggering, rhyming titan-pimp known as Dolemite when, in his version of events, he worked at Dolphin’s record store in LA. A local rummy named Rico regaled anyone within earshot with tall tales of sexual prowess, fighting skills and general badassery. Moore already had tasted a bit of fame with his singing, recording and dancing, but only a taste. Once he fashioned the stand-up comedy incarnation of the flamboyant, superhumanly enviable pimp Dolemite, things started changing, though his career trajectory was more of a zigzag than a rocket to the moon.

“Dolemite Is My Name” takes up most of its agreeably raunchy two hours with the financing, casting and filming of Moore’s make-or-break microbudget movie project: “Dolomite” (1975), riffing on themes and fantasies made marketable by “Shaft,” Pam Grier movies, you name it.

At its best, director Brewer’s film lounges alongside movies about moviemaking such as “Ed Wood” (written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who wrote this picture, too). We learn next to nothing about Moore’s private life; the movie is true-ish here and there, but mainly dwelling in a fanciful comic realm of pleasing fabrication. But the film-within-a-film’s real-life fate provides the stuff of dreams come true.