In the 1970s, Rudy Ray Moore is working a record shop by day and a nightclub by night, hoping to make it in LA show biz. It's not going well. His boss won't let him perform a stand-up routine, even though he's the emcee, and his wistful manner is just begging for inspiration. Thankfully, the city of angels gives it to him when a homeless wino stumbles into the store entertains and spellbinds everyone within earshot with his boisterous storytelling. The slick rhymes and tight meter of his stories and jokes are as brazenly audacious as the crude and vulgar content. Soon thereafter, a hypnotized Moore takes to the streets by night and absorbs everything he can about this urban ghetto talk, and in a magnificent scene around a trash can fire, he fashions his future stardom from the most unlikely of sources. But, in vino veritas, and what appears to us a Shakespearean fool appears to Moore a muse.
Indeed, Dolemite is My Name is the story of the man behind the pop culture sensation, the popularly dubbed "Godfather of Rap." A biopic of rare insight and frenetic energy, it carries us along with Moore as he develops his stage persona, Dolemite, a wisecracking pimp with excessive charisma that manifests in braggadocio and rhyming syncopation and no small amount of profanity. "Dolemite is my name," he announces himself to anyone who will listen, "and fuckin' up muthafuckas is my game." He details his bizarre sexual exploits along with his impossible feats of heroism, criminality, and social prowess, all the while strutting along in suits of vibrant hues, bedazzled and glittering, with his hat and cane akimbo.
The role is a perfect match for the unique talents of Eddie Murphy, who has been largely absent from the silver screen for many years now. This is not as clearly a dramatic role as his in Dreamgirls, nor is it remotely child-friendly as many might have come to expect. This is Murphy in rare form, spitting out so many profanities you might think this was a Tarantino flick. But he's no Samuel L. Jackson, and Murphy is here making a bold reclamation of his talents as a serious artist. Other worthy players buttress the film, especially Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Tituss Burgess, and even Ron Cephas Jones in a single scene, but the movie only works because of its leading man.
Moore eventually decides he's going to make a movie about his alter ego, and suddenly the movie takes a drastic turn and feels more akin to Ed Wood or The Disaster Artist than I was ready to handle (Fun fact: the writers of this film also wrote Ed Wood and Big Eyes). We get plenty of slapstick to mirror the foul-mouthed blasphemies, hilarious sex scenes, and downright absurd effects. The madcap comedy boils over to a fever pitch both in terms of content (the movie's production is bedeviled with setbacks, conflicting characters, and financial turmoil) and in terms of execution: fierce editing, heightened music, and increasingly voluptuous production design raise the stakes in every frame. They take over an abandoned hotel as a soundstage, employ (or, rather, "employ") a group of white film students from UCLA as tech crew, and heartily enjoy the shoot. Well, everyone except the director, who ends up walking out when he can't Moore's campy artistry and flippant attitude any longer.
By the finale, which depicts the premiere of the troubled and troubling kung-fu blaxploitation film, we understand that for all his faults and failures, Moore is an admirable and even endearing man. Moreover, as the on-screen text describes before the credits roll, Moore is in many ways the catalyst and safe haven of a specific subset of American culture at a time when culture was breaking. His amazing ability to signify (more properly, signifyin') is the touchstone for much of what we now appreciate as rap music, sure, but also largely establishes a foundation for contemporary Ebonics or Black Vernacular English. The film's amazing insight into the creation of culture carries along its messages of cultural appropriation in heavy doses, but they are quite easy to take along with its main course, the surprisingly heartwarming story of a down-and-out hopeful who makes it big. At least, big on his own terms.
And, ultimately, isn't that what really matters?
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