Michael Ledo
Dolemite (Rudy Ray Moore) is let out of prison in order to find the bad guys who we already know who they are. Our middle aged pot bellied karate fighter, battles bad rhymes, a bad script, bad acting while having a microphone in the scene.The film series is part of a so bad it is good, but in the realm of things, I found this film to be less entertaining the others.Guide: F-bomb, sex, nudity
JLRVancouver
"Dolemite" was definitely not made for a "rat-soup-eatin', insecure honky MF" like me but I liked it anyway. The movie is a 'Blaxploitation classic' (which some people may consider an oxymoron) – it's hard to say what's worse: the acting or the karate fights, but it's also hard to say what's better: the pimp suits or the funk. I find it amusing that these extremely crude, subversive, counterculture movies now show up, unedited, on TV Turner Classic Movies – it's like seeing poisonous snakes in a display case at a petting zoo. Times have certainly changed. Worth watching for its own sake as well as from a cultural history perspective, as a lot of modern comedy and rap culture are rooted in movies like this.
MBunge
As a time capsule from a particular social, cultural and economic era, Dolemite is remarkable. As a movie, it sucks very, very, very, very hard.This is one of those so-called "blaxsploitation" films from the 1970s and before you watch Dolemite or any of these films, you'd probably be well served to at least check out the Wikipedia entry on "blaxspoitation". If you don't, you could suffer a severe case of brain cramp trying to figure these things out.Dolemite (Rudy Ray Moore) is pimp/spoken word artist/night club owner/street avenger who starts out the movie in jail, where he may or may not have been framed by the cops for dealing in drugs and stolen furs. Yeah, I don't understand the stolen furs either. It must have been a 70s thing. Anyway, Dolemite is offered the chance to get out of jail if he'll go back to his old neighborhood and put a stop to the out of control crime and violence that's taken it over. Accepting the offer, Dolemite is picked up by a carful of his "ladies" and exchanges his prison-issued suit for his first of many pimptacular outfits. Returning to his neighborhood, Dolemite discovers that Willie Green (D'Urville Martin) has taken over his old night club. As Dolemite basically wanders from scenes of sex to scenes of violence and back again, we learn that Willie is connected to the mayor of the city and essentially runs Dolemite's old neighborhood to suit the mayor's agenda. Essentially, it's the story of the white power structure co-opting elements of the black community to "keep the black man down", with Dolemite being the returning hero spoiling that plan. It's a brutally primitive rendition of that story, but subtlety's not exactly a strong point of this movie. A couple of racist cops hassle Dolemite, a black FBI agent gets involved and Dolemite and his "ladies" use some amazingly bad 70s karate to defeat the forces of evil. I mean, seriously, there are 10 year olds in karate dojos all across America who could more convincingly kick people's butts.From almost every technical aspect, this is a laughably bad movie. It's poorly shot, poorly written, it looks cheap and the acting is almost uniformly terrible. Jerry Jones as the black FBI agent and D'Urville Martin are passable, I suppose, but Rudy Ray Moore's alleged acting consists of a "Can you dig it, baby?" nonchalance interspersed with overemphasis of the word "motherf****r"…and he still gives the third best performance of the film.For all of it's flaws, there are two things for which I can recommend this movie.1. This is a film made by 1970s urban black people, for 1970s urban black people, about the world of 1970s urban black people. I'm not saying this is some sort of documentary about the way the 70s actually were for African-Americans, but it does give you a theatrical view of how they looked at and felt about their world. I don't say that as some kind of excuse for how crappy this movie is, but this was the era when African-American filmmakers were getting their first meaningful chance to tell their stories their way. In a country where history is what happened last month and everything before that has vanished into the mists of time, this is a movie that slaps you in the face with how different things are today from how there were just a generation or so ago.2. For all the bad acting, bad camera-work, bad dialog and bad fight scenes, there's an infectious energy to Dolemite. Everything about this movie is raw and unpolished and unpretentious. If you ever got together and made movies with your friends when you were kids, the same honest joy that you can still see in those stories is the same thing you can see in Dolemite. These filmmakers and these performers are all so clearly caught up in what they're doing that they're extremely likable, no matter how awful they are. A great example of that is the clothing in this film. It is hilariously bizarre, but the performers AND the characters they play are so utterly at ease in these fashion disasters, so convinced that these fabricated atrocities are the greatest thing since sliced bread, that you'll end up wishing you could wear those sorts of outfits to work.If you want to watch a good movie, I really can't recommend Dolemite. There are just so many ways that it's truly terrible. But this is a fun movie, I enjoyed it and it's a reminder of how weird the 1970s actually were. So, if you ever are in the mood to watch a awful film about a pimp/spoken word artist/night club owner/street avenger and his army of karate chopping prostitutes, you now know where to look.
Doug Galecawitz
Dolemite is awesome. Rudy Ray Moore's rhymin kung fu pimp with horrible choreographed action sequences is about as close as you can get to becoming a spoof of a genre without actually being spoof. Citizen Kane this may not be nor Les Infant Au Revoir, but this is undoubtedly genius in it's own right. The production values in this movie are so bad they could qualify as existential special effects. The plot drags a little in the middle but the power of such a cheap premise as kung fu hookers is enough to bring all but the snootiest film lovers through. The infamous ever present boom mike evokes shades of the gloriously incompetent Ed Wood and never grows unfunny. I sometimes wonder if the boom mike was left in on purpose as commentary on the ridiculous aspects of movies in general but i usually get distracted by erotic scenes that lack eroticism to the point of high art mundanacity. Everything is this movie is alive and breathing, dripping with desperate longing to be simultaneously loved and reviled. It works.9 out of 10
