When I first heard of this I assumed it was a modern “reimagining” of Dolemite. Instead it looks to be about Rudy Ray Moore himself, and looks like it might be pretty good.
Out on Netflix as of yesterday, it’s excellent.
Yeah, I enjoyed it as well. You can feel that everyone involved had great reverence for the period and the people they’re playing. Loved every scene with Wesley Snipes.
Back in the day my friend and I went to see RRM at a little dive in Oakland. We were fearless, I guess, But on the way home we were improvising our own verses to “Signifying Monkey”.
Incidentally, if you’re left with a desire for the real thing, not only is Dolemite available for watching on Youtube, but so is this, which I think is a lot better:
This is probably the best movie Netflix has released. Good from start to finish.
Yeah, this was a hoot. It’s maybe a bit uniformly sweet, but it’s really hard not to like its heart, which is so thoroughly good-natured that they didn’t even make villains of the Bihari brothers.
Eddie Murphy was great, and for someone who spent so much of his career mugging for the audience, he’s capable of some beautiful subtlety in his face.
The unsubtle broadness is highly entertaining, too. And I loved RRM’s confusion trying to understand why the hell people were watching Billy Wilder’s The Front Page: “This movie is playing across the whole country, and they ain’t got no titties, no funny, and no kung fu!”
I seem to have completely missed out on this guy growing up. Should I watch (OG) Dolemite first, and/or listen to some of his comedy?
Black Dynamite was kind of a send up of Dolomite, plus a bit of Shaft. Same with I’m Gonna Get you Sucka.
His story is actually really cool. He was an older comedian who never made it and tried to reinvent himself several times, even doing vaudeville. But he heard on the street (literally, from homeless guys) these crazy made up singsong stories about this fictional over the top pimp called Dolomite. So he goes and PAYS the street guys for their characters and stories and then reinvents himself in a hugely funny and popular way. Along the way he invented a certain style of sing song rhyming and profanity laced poetry delivered in an over the top manner.
The movie argues that he invented rap, and even gives him the tagline of “The Godfather of Rap”. While the music of rap came from jazz, blues, R&B, etc., I would argue they are right, the type of delivery comes from … perhaps him? Or at least guys like him.
Just watch this first then if you are motivated check out the actual movies. The movie they make is actually a mashup of two films with scenes from both.
Yeah, agreed, watch this first. Check out the actual Dolomite movie if you want, or go with the superior Black Dynamite.
There are scenes in Black Dynamite I think straight from the Dolemite movies. Bullhorn also clearly based on him. One of my only problems with BD is they don’t give Moore any kind of shout out in the credits.
If you google there’s a few articles out there on his influence in rap. Snoop who cameos has said without Moore there’d be no Snoop Dog.
Start here. (Obviously NSFW)
What a great movie. This movie had so much heart. Right from the beginning when he says how he never gets ahead and isn’t worth anything, I love the way these people that barely work with him get behind him and start helping him out.
What really took me by surprise was the very end, when its revealed that RRM was a real person, and this was a real movie, and all this was based on a true story. I just figured it was all too outrageous to be true. Honestly, if they hadn’t shown scenes at the end of the real RRM and the real Dolemite, I still would have thought it was “based on” a true story but mostly flight of fancy (which might still be the case, mind you, but it sure resulted in a movie that looked like the one we saw get made).
That was beautiful.