Baaaad Motha Shut Yo Mouth

BLACK DYNAMITE is spoof of 70s Blaxploitation movies. This is a review of it.

 

Release date: 3 September 2010 (exclusively @ Screen d‘Olier Street)

Directed by: Scott Sanders

Starring: Michael Jai White

Cert: 15A

Running Time: 84 mins

 

In 1971, MGM released a little film called Shaft about an African American private detective who was cool, rightgeous and not too bad in the sack. The era of Blaxploitation was born. Shaft was a major crossover success and spawned a number of woegeous sequels and ridiculous copy cats, with disco, kung-fu, pimping and the ills of drug dealing developing as the main themes. The genre pretty much died at the end of the 70s with The Avenging Disco Godfather.

 

Black Dynamite takes Blaxploitation, holds a mirror up to it and has a damn good chuckle. All of the boxes are ticked: Dodgy soul music. Check. Wooden acting. Check. Awful production values. Check, check, check – rogue boom mics, unsynced dialogue and stray clips of file footage all pop up. All of these mistakes are obviously deliberate and the script is delivered with deadpan briliance.

 

The plot – for what it’s worth – revolves around former CIA agent, Black Dynamite trying to wipe a wave of heroin off the streets and out of the orphanage. Added spice comes from the fact that BD’s brother has been killed by the mob boss responsible for the wave. Don’t worry If this story doesn’t appeal to you because it is abandoned at the end of the second act, as BD learns that there is a boss above the boss, and above that boss is another boss, and so on for the rest of the movie.

 

Michael Jai White stars as the eponimous Black Dynamite and is also the primary writer of the piece. MJW has been plugging away in Hollywood since 1989 without making any big impact. Nobody was writing a part that called for a big black martial artist with impeccible comedic timing, so he wrote one for himself. He fits the role like a glove, as you would imagine. He has done such a good job that there is likely to be a raft of movies featuring big black martial artists with impeccible comedic timing.

 

Black Dynamite will spark of a twinge of nostalgia from anyone who enjoyed the work of the Zuckers on Airplane and The Naked Gun movies, or the Wayans Brothers’ work with Don’t Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood and Scary Movie. The parody aspect is clearly central to the comedy, but is offset by gags and observational comedy too.

 

A heavy dosage of farce is also present and when BD and his crew play six degrees of separation with the clues from the case the result is a level of ludicrousity that would make Monty Python jealous.

 

The film is full of cod pathos with BD often delivering heartfelt soliloquies explaining how horrible the world is. You can’t take any of these outbursts of heart seriously though, as they are so overdone and are sandwiched in between healthy doses of racial and sexual political incorrectness.

 

The pacing of the movie is perfect. Scenes last the length of a good sketch but don’t feel separated from each other. It all zips along quite well and knits together perfectly.

 

The movie also gets bonus points for having an almost exclusively black cast without any rappers. There’s nothing wrong with rappers acting, but they too often get roles ahead of trained, talented black actors. This film breaks this trend without drawing attention to it.

 

This is an action packed, rib tickling, motha lovin’, slice of soul, and if that sounds like your bag then you will most definitely dig it.