Hey folks, Harry here... You know... this is one of those things that is just a tough thing to do... Spike Lee has made an incredibly biting satire... which he is now expected to TEST SCREEN. Never mind the fact that almost everyone completely doesn't get satire... Now... it can be overplayed and underplayed, but here... it seems that Spike Lee has walked the line quite well... He has some changes that will inevitably be made... but I just hope the meat of this film remains intact. Spike is the only filmmaker working today that can really make this movie and push these types of buttons... I just hope that he pushes them in the right order. NOW... before you read this know that the movie is two and a half hours long... this was the first screening that had been held for the film... The screening was held with the idea that Spike could see an audiences' take on the film. It actually sounds like this might be quite a good film when Spike finishes it.
Hi Harry,
I've been a long time reader of your site, but this is my first time contributing. I got a chance to see a preview screening of the new Spike Lee movie "Bamboozled" last night. Let me preface this by saying that I'm a Spike Lee fan, not a huge one, but I admire his work and what he has to say. I liked "Do the Right Thing" (except for the ending) and loved "Summer of Sam." This is a first time review so please bear with me.
The premise of "Bamboozled" is great. It's about a TV writer that is pushed to come up with a "hip black" show for today's audience. In response to that, De La Croix (played by Damon Wayans who I have a hard time seeing in any dramatic role, although this is part comedy too) creates an incredibly racist show which is a throwback to the old minstrel shows which depicted characters in black face that were essentially song and dance characters. The idea backfires. It becomes a huge hit that everyone loves and Wayans (along with the other characters) struggles with the success that it brings.
I wanted to love the movie. But I just liked it. The "minstrels" in the TV show are played by Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson. Both give nice performances as starving artists taken off the street to be in this show. Can they be blamed for taking this chance at the big time? For making enough money to put a roof over their heads? For trusting De La Croix? Who's bamboolzing who?
The movie is wonderfully gray and satrical. There is no clear "right" or "wrong" in the movie. Each character is flawed, and no one escapes lampooning. To offset the minstrel show, there is a rap group called "Mau Mau." They are a radical/militant group who are an extreme reflection of today's culture. They cause Wayans to say one of the funniest lines of the movie which I won't give away here.
The movie is long, around two and a half hours. Some of the TV show scenes were too long and I found myself getting sleepy. The end of the movie is where it falls apart. Basically I couldn't believe the actions of some of the characters. It was too easy. I won't say anymore except that I was disappointed at the ending.
There are some incredibly powerful images in the movie. Savion and Tommy putting on the black makeup, just like they did originally, and the montage at the end depicting all the racist cartoons of that time period set to some wonderful music.
This movie is fresh and inventive. Despite the ending, I would definitely recommend it.
Keep up the good work,
One (of the Two) Kings
And then we have this look... Here ya go...
I am a big fan of yours Harry and have been visiting your page for years. But now is the first time I feel that I have something worthwhile to contribute. Last night I caught a screening of Spike Lee's forthcoming joint, BAMBOOZLED; the woman in charge of the testing staff told us we were the first audience to see the film. I should preface by saying that I am a Spike Lee fan. His movies are far from flawless, but they are consistently better and more thought-provoking than most of the garbage Hollywood charges us $9.50 to see. BAMBOOZLED was no exception, and I believe in parts and in some ways this is Mr. Lee's best film to date.
It might also be his most controversial. BAMBOOZLED tells the story of Pierre De La Croix (played by Damon Wayans; apologies for any misspellings of character names, etc.), an impossibly rich and even more impossibly pretentious TV writer who cannot get any of his shows about intelligent, middle class or better black families on the air. Consumed with bitterness and under heavy pressure from his boss (played by Michael Rappaport) to write something new and edgy, he decides to commit career suicide: He creates a modern minstrel show, set in a watermellon patch and populated with ignorant, happy-go-lucky sambos played by black actors in blackface. De La Croix recruits two talented street performers (Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson) to star as Man Tan and Sleep N' Eat, characters that the show's MC announces as 'two real coons.' To De La Croix's surprise, the show is a tremendous hit. Glover and Davidson become huge stars. People all over America (black, white, hispanic, young and old) show their devotion to the show by wearing blackface.
Whatever one's personal politics may be, the scenes of Glover and Davidson performing in blackface are deeply unnerving and unsettling. Ostensibly, cultural standards have changed a great deal in this country since the times when minstrel shows were looked upon as an innocent form of entertainment; one of Mr. Lee's greatest successes in this movie is to force his audience to analyze just how much they really have changed. This implicit challenge to the notion of racial progress, combined with the horrific history of race relations in this country (which Mr. Lee is careful to keep in his audience's mind) makes the scenes of the 'modern minstrel show' emotionally and intellectually charged on a level that I find unequaled in any of Mr. Lee's other films.
Indeed, as I was watching the first half of this movie I remember thinking - this is Spike Lee's triumph. As I mentioned previously, I consider Mr. Lee's other films to be very good but not perfect. He seems to me an excellent director but a mediocre to poor screenwriter. HE GOT GAME, for instance, was very well acted and directed but could not overcome its painfully clunky script. At least early on it appears that BAMBOOZLED does not suffer from the same deficiencies. Mr. Lee expertly toes the line between satire and drama, allowing the audience members to untangle for themselves the ambiguity that this creates within the characters. De La Croix, for instance, is at least part cardboard stereotype of an upper middle class black who has rejected his past and upbringing (it is not revealing too much to note that Pierre De La Croix is not his given name) and at least part fully drawn and rounded character. It seems to me that all Mr. Lee's characters, to some extent, exist on this border of two and three dimensionality, but here it works better than usual.
Credit for this of course goes to the actors as well, particularly Mr. Glover and Mr. Davidson, both of whom bring a touching sadness to their roles as street performers who are offered a chance at money and celebrity. The conflict on their faces as they apply their black face make-up for the first time goes a long way towards lending emotional weight to what otherwise might be a merely political film. Also deserving of special mention is Mos Def, who plays Big Black Africa, an inarticulate but driven rapper. In fact Mos Def is one of the most articulate rappers on the planet, and he seems both to enjoy playing the opposite of his true self and to understand how it feels to have passion but lack intelligence.
Sadly, BAMBOOZLED falls apart as it goes on. It is frustrating to mention given the high quality of the film's beginning, but a train wreck provides the most apt metaphor for the course of the plot in the film's second half. Almost as soon as De La Croix's show becomes a hit, the movie begins to drag. Unexplained and irrelevant scenes pile up one on top of another, most involving Jada Pinkett-Smith, playing De La Croix's assistant in an under-written role. The movie becomes unwieldy and loses its focus. I do not want to spoil anything, so I will simply state that the ending is both bizarre and totally unsatisfactory. I have no idea if what I saw was a 'final cut', but if so then so much the worse for audiences. BAMBOOZLED follows its promise with an ending so disappointing that it almost (_almost_) tarnishes all that came before. Again, Mr. Lee's screenwriting seems to be the culprit. He cannot sustain the balance he had struck between drama and satire, and he falls into a dark pit between the two that can best be described as melodrama or, worse, soap opera.
That having been said, this remains a very good film that is well worth anyone's time and money - just brace yourself for the ending. Mr. Lee never limits himself to a single issue, political or social, and BAMBOOZLED is about far more than just television or the media. The phrase 'keeping it real' is tossed around repeatedly in the film, and to me that is the movie's central theme - what does it mean to keep it real? Nearly every character hides their identity in blackface at some point during the film. Nearly every character has multiple names or has changed their name. BAMBOOZLED, then, is ultimately concerned with identity, and the most profound questions it raises are questions of identity: What does it mean to black? Or white? Or a nigger? Or an artist? How does one stay true to one's self and to one's race? Or one's pocket book even? Much of Mr. Lee's greatness stems from the fact that he is one of the few directors in American cinema today with the bravery to ask these questions.
Hope this helps Harry.
-Leopold Bloom
