REVIEW: Dolemite Is My Name [2019]

I want the world to know I exist. Much like The Room, Dolemite isn’t a good movie. Unlike The Room, however, Dolemite wants you to laugh. Maybe you laugh at what the actors are doing or maybe you laugh at the sheer audacity of Rudy Ray Moore scraping together a cast and crew who clearly had no idea what to do, but you’re laughing just the same. There’s a distinction to be made here because even those of us (myself included) who are having a good time at the film’s…

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REVIEW: Dolemite [1975]

The game is rough and the stake is your life. After adopting the persona in his stand-up act and on multiple comedy albums, Rudy Ray Moore decided to self-finance a feature film around the character of Dolemite. The result is bad—shoddy direction, horrid editing, and outlandish scenes devoid of any bearing on the plot itself. And yet the name has endured as a touchstone of Blaxploitation cinema regardless due to a cult status that defies craft in order to focus upon intent. Moore sought a venue with which to entertain…

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