Dolemite Is My Name follows the life of Rudy Ray Moore, played by Eddie Murphy, first as he develops his character Dolemite for his stand-up act, and then later as he produces his Dolemite movie with very little budget and resources. Every time he hits an obstacle, he perseveres, until ultimately his film is made and screened in movie theaters to huge success.
This was fantastic. Eddie Murphy is great, bringing us back to the 80s and 90s R-rated Murphy, but at the same time, giving that touch of feel-good that we got from his more family oriented PG films of the 2000s. And that's ultimately for me what makes this work so well, it's an R-rated Disney-uplifting-based-on-a true-story-type movie, but it doesn't lay it on too thick, so that when we need it to be poignant, we can enjoy it without it feeling too sappy. Beyond that, it has so many hilarious moments, with such a talented cast that is all invested in the project and doing their best to make it succeed. Yes, ten years ago this would have been a theatrical release, but at least Netflix is there to fill the void so this gets made at all in the modern movie making climate, and who knows, maybe without a big studio sticking their nose in, we get this the way it is here.
We've never had Eddie Murphy on here before, and what makes this whole straight to Netflix thing so odd, is we're not getting Eddie Murphy in some DTV action yarn shot in Michigan with 50 Cent and Bruce Willis in it like we do when most big screen actors go DTV; that's not what this movie is on any level, it's the real deal. It's something that we're going to have to look at more on the DTV Connoisseur, because we also have Martin Scorsese making movies for Netflix. Do we review The Irishman too? And what does that mean for future DTV flicks when something like this is swimming in the same pool as they are? I think part of it is, with me only doing one movie a week, those yarns shot in Michigan or New Orleans with Bruce Willis or whoever on the tin will probably get squeezed out if they don't have a Hall of Famer in them, or if they don't generate the buzz a movie like Avengement did. When you also factor in all the past DTV flicks from the 80s and 90s I still need to look at, movies like Dolemite Is My Name and The Irishman totally change the calculus for us.
Of the many names in this film, the one whose work we've seen most here on the DTV Connoisseur is Wesley Snipes, who plays D'Urville Martin. I heard Michael Jai White in a recent interview say "when people see you kick someone in the head, you get known for kicking people in the head," which meant, "if you do action, you get typecast as an action guy," and I think to some extent that happened to Snipes, so it was great to see him among so many great comedic actors hold his own and show us his range beyond action again. With the Black Panther movie having so much success, I think people forgot that Snipes was already playing an African American Marvel super hero on the big screen in the late 90s/early 2000s. Those Blade movies were a lot of fun, and they were a lot of fun in large part because of how great Snipes was in them.
As we discussed in the Gerald's Game post, which was another Netflix original we looked at, you can't get this movie on DVD or Blu-Ray. You either pay $13 a month for a Netflix account, or you're out of luck. So on the one hand, it's fantastic that Netflix is filling the void while the big movie houses are looking for the next billion dollar property, on the other hand, I can't just plunk down my $20 and have this to watch whenever I want, I have to pay $12 a month in perpetuity--and then who knows if Netflix ever decides to take it down. I also need to have an internet connection to watch it, so if you go to a camp or cabin in the woods that has no internet, you can't show your friends the movie that haven't seen it yet. If you have an Eddie Murphy collection, you can't add it to that, just like you can't add The Irishman to a Martin Scorsese collection you may have. That part troubles me, that we're so beholden to Netflix, especially with a movie that's so great like this and how much a Blu-Ray with all the extras would make it that much better. (Jen showed me a Stranger Things DVD from Netflix she saw online, so maybe these will come out on DVD and Blu-Ray eventually.)
There are so many great names in this movie, but with only 8 paragraphs, I couldn't get them all, so I narrowed it down to one performance that I felt really tied the movie together for me, and that was Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Lady Reed. The movie overall does a great job straddling the line between raunchy comedy romp and syrupy sweet sentimentality porn to give us something in the middle that's very mature and never strays too far in either direction, and I think Randolph's performance embodies that. As a supporting character, a lot of her interactions with Murphy help to round out his character and give him more depth, but I think she also managed to make her come out of those interactions with more depth as well, and made us want to root for her too; and with all the silliness in the movie, we needed that depth to make this movie turn out the way Murphy intended.
I can't recommend this enough, which also means, if you don't have Netflix, I'm technically recommending you get that too. I don't know if it will eventually come out on Blu-Ray, but however you get a chance to see it, it's worth it.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8526872
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