…And Eddie Murphy Comebacks is My Game!
It’s been too long since Eddie Murphy demanded our attention with a project. The last truly good movie he appeared in was Dreamgirls, thirteen years ago, though he provided some of his old comic energy in 2011’s Tower Heist. Maybe you’re a big Shrek Forever After or A Thousand Words fan, but either way, Craig Brewer’s comedy biopic Dolemite Is My Name is a return to form for Murphy that is easily his best work in over a decade. Despite that low bar, Dolemite is a terrific time at the theater, a crowd-pleasing story of a scrappy entertainer finding his niche and making his own luck.
Screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski have written a hilarious journey through the creation and launch of Rudy Ray Moore’s Dolemite character. In the 1970s, Moore (Murphy) was a floundering comedian and singer who could barely keep his gig introducing other artists’ performances. Inspired by the rhyming stories about a man named Dolemite told by local homeless, Moore decides to rewrite and reinterpret them into a flamboyant pimp character he would assume onstage, on comedy records, and, eventually, in movies.
As is a hallmark of these kind of showbiz success stories, just about everyone doubts Rudy’s idea, so he gets creative to make his own opportunities. This culminates in the self-produced Dolemite blaxploitation film, which was made on the cheap by Moore and other filmmaking neophytes, but what they lack in experience they make up for in verve. Dolemite Is My Name carries the same scrappy charm of Alexander and Karaszewski’s Ed Wood, as well as some of the lo-fi fun of Eddie Murphy’s collaboration with Steve Martin in the Hollywood satire Bowfinger.
Though this film has its fun, Brewer and company have crafted a product that is wholly sincere. There’s a palpable sense of joy that Rudy and his team get from making their movie, and it’s that enthusiasm that would ultimately make Dolemite become the phenomenon that it was. Before seeing this film, I knew about as much about Rudy Ray Moore and Dolemite as the introductory paragraph on his Wikipedia page provides. I can’t even say how accurately Murphy portrays him, but the character of Rudy Ray Moore fits him like a glove. The real life history at hand isn’t what drives this film’s energy. It’s a picture with equal measures of sincerity and hilarity, and it’s a reminder of just how good Eddie Murphy can be when he’s given a project that’s really worth his time.