Bamboozled (2000)

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

First off, My reviews do not go into detail about the movie or what the story is, etc. My reviews are based off of the movie goers thoughts/opinions after seeing the movie. If you want to know what the movie is about, read the synopsis. This is a true opinion review for those who are debating whether or not this movie is for them.This movie is absolutely ridiculous. It is truly one of the dumbest, most horribly written movies I have ever had the displeasure of sitting through. There are quite a few masterpieces by Spike Lee, but believe me, this ain't one of em. For this movies to have as high of a rating as it does (6.5), there has got to be some sort of biased opinions being given. Skip this. (2/10)

The basic premise of the film is witty enough that I would think most people would want to see it just upon hearing about it: a modern-day minstrel/coon-show intended as satire becomes a big hit on TV. There are so many ways for this premise to be so right, but most of what Spike Lee did with it was unfortunately so wrong.Just to be positive, I'll start with what I did like: I enjoyed how he was unafraid to be self-referential.... it seems like every major player here is referenced. Spike Lee is mentioned by name, Damon Wayans has a line about "In Living Color", there's reference to Will Smith (his wife Jaida Pinkett Smith has a major role), there's reference to Mos Def (or at least use of the term), and so on. Which, if you're going to make a film like this, you have to show up without your makeup too if you know what I mean.I thought Savion Glover was really excellent as Manray/Mantan (renamed in honor of Mantan Moreland). His dancing, his charisma, and his dark energy were perfect for the part. I thought Smith came off pretty well as an intelligent and motivated woman, although she couldn't hold together her part in the ending because the logic of the character had broken down which was Lee's fault and not her's.So we're getting into the bad there, possibly already the ugly. OK let's start with the big target: Damon Wayans. About 10 seconds into the movie I strongly suspected that he was going to sink the film. 5 minutes later I was certain. This guy can be excellent, sometimes, but he really only registers on screen in one dimension if you know what I mean. This film and this character required more of him than he is capable of providing even for a director like Lee. He got the Delecroix character perfect, and it would have been fine for a sketch or a character part, but the inner person that the surface Delecroix is hiding does not show up in Wayans' performance.Now, it should probably be a generalized rule of satire that you should not begin a satire with a stated definition of what "satire" is. Because if you do that, then you had better be making a satire of satire itself and I don't think even Spike Lee would aspire to that much less achieve it. There are many points in this film where the satire breaks down and I really think Lee is very poor at this form of storytelling. For example, the two "sponsors" commercials that he shows, the spoof of Tommy Hillfigger and the malt liquor thing, are much MUCH too broad and register into the area of farce instead of satire. They have no edge. It's satire for dummies. He literally has the Tommy Hillfigger-esque character saying stuff like "buy these clothes, spend your money and never get out of the ghetto." And of course he can't pronounce "ghetto" correctly. Oh god, Spike, that's a reg'lar knee slapper! It's all sickeningly broad. The malt liquor spot makes Ben Stiller's "Booty Sweat" mockommercial in "Tropic Thunder" look like Aristophanes by comparison.Same message all over the place with this movie: nice ideas Spike, but tone it down a bit. In terms of tone, this movie is flying all over the place in an infuriating way, especially as it eventually develops into this dramatic story that the rest of the picture doesn't support. I couldn't buy any of the things that were happening at the end, that any of the characters had actually reached that point naturally. I didn't think Savion Glover's character would walk away from the show, I didn't think Mos Def's would actually get off his drunk ass and do something like that, I wasn't feeling Wayan's rage at these icons of minstrelry. I just didn't buy the resolution for any of those characters. The only way I could understand it and possibly re-evaluate this film is if I could see the whole ending as some kind of satire of dramatic films. But I didn't think I was supposed to be laughing during those scenes. It seemed like he wanted it to be more serious than it needed to be, more dramatic and violent than the story really called for in the first place.One other thing: I didn't think they made the show funny enough that it was believable how it became a big hit. If I had been cracking up at the routines, then I would have started to feel guilty myself and the movie would have gone to a whole other level. But since it's just a bunch of stale vaudeville routines, it's hard to believe what you're seeing on screen. The whole thing sounds like the most insane greatest Dave Chappelle sketch ever, except that unfortunately it was written by Spike Lee instead so it's constantly reverting to a tone that's alternately ministerial, professorial and documentarian instead of satirical. Just for a random totally unrelated example, one of the reasons why "Spinal Tap" really works and is a fantastic satire of the whole rock scene and rock documentaries, is because the actual rock/metal music in the movie is just good enough that you could imagine somebody liking it, but just bad enough that you can laugh at it.

Yes, Spike Lee is an excellent movie director. So are others. However, he distinguishes himself with depictions of "black" or "colored" Americans being victimized by "white" society. As in his movie "CSA," Lee dredged up the long dead corpse of slavery to remind everyone that racism abounded in America long ago. What he cannot understand is that segregation and slavery were curses on everyone. "Whites" fought a war over it while "blacks" were still selling their brothers and sisters to slave traders in Africa. The NAACP was begun by white people. So, why must he cling to the bitterness of a past that died long ago? Why not discover what America has become? Either Lee failed to understand the message of Bamboozled and CSA,or he must hate his own race. In CSA, he shows an America that never rid itself of slavery, yet still landed a man on the moon, became a global power, and was an economic giant. The only difference between our country and an America where slave-holding was mandatory was the lack of entertainers and sports. Is that what Lee believes about the races? I hate to tell him this, but there are great entertainers and athletes who couldn't't pass as black. In "Bamboozled," blacks betrayed blacks by profiting from insulting racial stereotypes. They made money by using the "N" word in every sentence. One character claimed that saying the "N" word kept his teeth "white." It certainly lined his pockets. It has lined Spike's pockets. too.So, what has Lee accomplished in this movie? I think that once again he has bamboozled us all.

An obvious challenge to Spike Lee's Bamboozled starts with the opening scene of Pierre Delacroix's broad accent. Like an old VHS tape, there is something about the sound of Damon Wayans voice that hurts the ears and makes us wonder if Lee was intoxicated while Wayans was shooting his scenes. But as the film progressed, I realized the magnitude of the brutal, pompous accent. In this film, racial identity is at the forefront of its message while Lee successfully incorporates the theme of one's own identity as a human being. While we see blatant racism being practiced by our own black protagonist, we soon understand that this is all possible because he never really knows who he is as a result of society's attempt to tell him who he should be: a bumbling black man who can entertain white folk.Halfway through the film we find that Pierre is not really Pierre. His name is Peerless, the son of Junebug, a black comedian who tells his son to not sell out to Hollywood because they will change who he is in order to make money. Pierre's problem is, he has no grasp of a true identity, therefore he has had to create his own persona to please his white executives.On a more humorous note, Mos Def plays a black hip hop artist to refuses to be called by his "slave name" Julius Hopkins, and instead wants to be called Big Blak Afrika. Again the idea of black identity in a white society is explored.In the end, we realize, in some part, why there is an identity crisis among African Americans when we see the montage of racially charged cartoons, films, and TV shows which pigeon hole blacks into stereotypes. This scene more than any other scene in the film made me ashamed and saddened by America's tendency to entertain through exploitation. Lee readdresses the foundation of racism that has already been created in our society even though many have already forgotten these images.