Dolemite Is My Name

            Dolemite Is My Name, which premiered Friday on Netflix is a glorious, funny and funky tribute to trail-blazing comedian Rudy Ray Moore. Eddie Murphy give one of his best performances as the frustrated comic, who created a persona “Dolemite” from stories passed down from drunks and hobos in the neighborhood. He channeled this rapping pimp on stage to great acclaim and created his own home-made, unbelievably rude records. Eventually he captured it all on film. This movie concentrates on the can-do (almost Ed Wood) attitude that caused Rudy to round up friends and film students to help bring his vision on screen to inner city theaters.

            The film is well-directed by Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow)- it’s affectionate, riotously funny, and with a sensational cast. Wesley Snipes is hilarious as the eye-rolling, fey director D’Urville Martin, Keegan-Michael Key as the screenwriter who unsuccessfully tried to add grit and street pathos into the script, the sublime Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Lady Reed, a woman Rudy Ray Moore took under his wing and helped her find her comic persona on stage and in bawdy records- her Sensuous Black Woman discs are filthy and fabulous.

            I was slightly concerned when I first heard about the project, because I’d met Rudy Ray Moore when I interviewed him in the 90s for Paper magazine (here’s the link) and he was so funny and candid and kind, and I was such a fan of his outrageous movies that I feared this would end up a vanity project for Murphy. But the result left me laughing out loud and even occasionally left me with tears in my eyes. If this turns people on to this unique comic legend all the better.