BLACK DYNAMITE
Directed by Scott Sanders
Produced by Jenny Wiener Steingart & Jon Steingart
Written by Michael Jai White, Byron Minns & Sanders
Released by Apparition
USA. 90 min. Rated R
With Michael Jai White, Arsenio Hall, Tommy Davidson, John Salley & Salli Richardson-Whitfield
 

This is the kind of movie that keeps you laughing for more than a few minutes after it ends, a spoof that shouldn’t work, but does. It takes off on what is already a parody of itself, the blaxploitation flick Dolemite (1975) that starred the inimitable (and late) Rudy Ray Moore, who couldn’t act at all but had such a bad-ass aura (or just the determination to be one) that it got him through the movie kicking ass and taking names. It was also a bad movie, but fun bad, sometimes hilarious bad, and I was wondering how Black Dynamite could work as a full-fledged comedy take-off. It turns out it works smashingly.

Plot—who needs a mofo plot? It’s all about the Black Dynamite and how he fights against The Man, against drug pushers, against nefarious Vietnamese/Chinese; hell, he even fights Richard Nixon if he has to! He’s Black Dynamite, a brother who doesn’t mess around when it comes to the ladies or to his enemies. There perhaps is an actual plot, but as with Mel Brooks, or even Hot Fuzz to a certain extent, you don’t need it. What’s up on the screen is quite enough without having to get too much into the story... well, then again, the part about some orphanages in peril counts as story, I guess.

For every one or two gags or one-liners that don’t work 10 others succeed, a ratio better than in any comedy I’ve recently seen. Did I mention Tommy Davidson as a character named Creamed Corn? Or the dastardly plot involving Anaconda Malt Liquor and how Black Dynamite and his crack team of Greek scholars crack the case wide open? There’s not one scene that isn’t at least amusing, and there are many times where it is gut-busting hilarious.

Some of this is simply credited to Michael Jai White, who I never thought would be adept at comedy (he also was co-writer). He channels the spirit of Rudy Ray Moore while creating his own iconic mofo mojo.

Black Dynamite is grind-house meets comedy-house. For all of the in-jokes for fans of Dolemite, or the boom microphone gag (when it slips obviously into a shot for a full minute), it still works for any audience looking for a solid, absurd comedy. Matter of fact, this is best to be experience with some buddies at a midnight screening jam-packed with people ready to get in on some Black Dynamite action. Jack Gattanella
October 16, 2009