Dolemite is My Name (2019): Eddie Murphy Is Back

Yes, Eddie Murphy is back! Although never completely idle, the former star of SNL, 48 Hours (1982), Trading Places (1983), Beverly Hills Cop I, II and III (1984, 1987, 1994), Coming to America (1988) and The Nutty Professor (1996), as well as several concert specials, most notably Eddie Murphy Raw (1987), has not had much of a screen presence since his terrific, award winning performance in Dreamgirls (2006). The 58-year-old actor-comedian reemerges triumphantly as the protagonist in the new Netflix film Dolemite is My Name which began streaming on October 25. It’s also showing on the big screen in select theaters. The movie features a startlingly good performance by Murphy in a primarily dramatic role, albeit as a very funny performer.

Dolemite is My Name  is based on the true story of Rudy Ray Moore and the making of a 1975 Blaxploitation film called Dolemite. Moore always wanted to be a star, and performed for years in various venues as a comedian and a singer, even recording a few albums in the late 1950s and early 1960s (with little success, however).  In the late Sixties, Moore was still trying., Now in his 40s,  he came up with the persona of “Dolemite” - a sort-of mythic/comic pimp-like character through which he delivered rhyming monologues that were often quite funny and always raucously vulgar. The character, performed initially in Black nightclubs and then in a series of “live” comedy LP albums, became a huge hit in urban African-American communities across the country. In the mid-1970s, through ingenuity, grit, much borrowing and an iron will to succeed, Moore managed to produce the eponymous movie - a  crude, somewhat amateurish affair, which to everyone’s surprise, was again quite successful, at least with black audiences.

Dolemite (the movie)(1975), featuring Moore as the middle aged, slightly paunchy hero Dolemite, was kind of a low-budget version of earlier 70s pictures like Shaft (1971) and Super Fly (1972). You know: pimps, whores, a fly hero, double-dealing bad guys, gangsta cool, gangsta honor, etc.  Most white folks. I’d venture to say, have never heard of Moore and have never seen Dolemite.  

I can say with no fear of contradiction that Dolemite is My Name is a far, far better film than Dolemite, in much the same way that The Disaster Artist (2017), about actor Tommie Wiseau’s attempt to make a movie, is a much better movie than Wiseau’s resulting The Room (2003), a truly awful film (yet a cult classic because it was so weirdly bad). In fact, Dolemite is My Name is – if not a five-star classic – pretty darn good. It is funny, clever, endearing, and I can even say uplifting, especially considering it is based on a real-life story (and from what I can tell, sticks pretty close to the truth).

It is also well-acted with a terrific, largely Black cast that includes Mike Epps, Keegan-Michael Key, Craig Robinson, Snoop Dog, Wesley Snipes, Chris Rock and many more. Most notable though, other than Murphy himself, is relative newcomer Da’Vine Joy Randolph as a character called Lady Reed, a plump, thirty-something woman whom Moore finds in a honky-tonk bar and, through his charisma and positivity, lifts up to become a star in his movie. Indeed Randolph, as Lady Reed, provides the most heartwarming moment in Dolemite is My Name when, even as it appears that the project will be a bust, she tearfully thanks Moore for featuring a “curvy” woman like her in a feature film.  

But the true star of Dolemite is My Name is Eddie Murphy, of course. He does everything.  His character is trying to do something seemingly impossible, but insists to all the doubters that he will succeed regardless.  Murphy plays it small in private moments, as Moore confronts his own doubts about this crazy project he has undertaken, that he can’t afford and that may well lead to his financial and reputational ruin. Murphy plays it big when Rudy Ray Moore needs to play it big onstage doing his Dolemite character - a beautiful example of an actor (Murphy) playing an actor (Moore) playing a bigger than life character. In the midst of which we see in Murphy’s eyes, above his showy Dolemite pimp-outfit and shit-eating grin, Moore’s worry about how this is going over, and his will to make it work. We see in Moore a very different kind of confidence than Murphy displayed earlier in his career – not cock-sure or prideful or swaggering, but a determined, desperate, nervous confidence that says I have to make this happen and dammit, I will. He is sometimes brash, but mostly he is very, very human.

Dolemite is My Name is directed by Craig Brewer, a white guy who nevertheless helmed the terrific Hustle and Flow (2005), starring Terence Howard along with a primarily Black cast. That picture won one Oscar (best original song: It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp) and garnered another Oscar nomination for Howard in the “best performance by a lead actor” category. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Eddie Murphy also earns a  best actor nomination for his role here. He’s that good.

1 hour 57 minutes               Rated R: for pervasive [m—f—g] language, crude sexual content [mostly from the vulgar mouth of ‘Dolemite’], and graphic nudity [lots of 1970s sexploitation – but nothing actually prurient, and one bit quite hilarious]

Grade: Murphy – A, Movie as a whole – B+

Currently streaming on Netflix and on the big screen at select theaters nationwide.