Bamboozled (2000)

Excellent, a Must See

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Bamboozled (2000): Dir: Spike Lee / Cast: Damon Wayans, Jada Pinkett, Savion Glover, Tommy Davidson, Michael Rapaport: Satiric view into racism and entertainment. Title represents the manipulation of this image into the minds of society. Damon Wayans plays a creative consultant at a T.V station. His boss claims to b e black because he married a black woman. He approaches Wayans about creating a program of racial controversy for ratings. Wayans scouts about and eventually turns two black street performers into characters named Man-Tan and sleep 'n' Eat for a program called The Alabama Porch Monkeys, which is both a media sensation and a controversy. Director Spike Lee highlights with images from black T.V. programs. To his previous credit are Malcolm X and Summer of Sam. Wayans creates an individual who is tired of media manipulation yet pulled by its corruption to the point where he is staring at consequences. Jada Pinkett-Smith is his voice of reason until her brother is killed due to controversy stemmed from the show. Now her sense of loyalty is altered in favor of self served justice. Michael Rapaport brings much humour as the enthusiastic forceful boss. Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson play the exploited entertainers forced to wear blackface. Their destinies prove different in this well-crafted look at racism, media and one's soul. Score: 10 / 10

This movie was far FAR!more insulting than any of the images of black faced media it honored by portraying...I find Spike Lee to be a tan skinned black man whom is talented some what but emotionally unstable. And I notice though I haven't see anyone address it, he really thinks lighter skinned, such as himself are better than the darker ones. Notice this is why the lighter skinned men and woman are more heroic and interesting, the darker ones are more apt to have issues. Malcolm X was the only movie he made that was up to snuff...and he couldn't sway the color thing because it was based on a real story...otherwise the LOL dark skinned Muslims would have instead been drug dealer and gang-bangers! It is so obvious that Spike lee got a hate for white men and a disdain for dark women...count how many he has dared to have in any of his movies ...they are the ones that find it harder to get work you would think he would have lend a helping hand but truly people, he do not like them...SPIKE LEE IS A INSANE MAN HE IS A SELF-HATING WHITE HATING DARK WOMEN HATING CONFUSED BIGOT!BTW the worst most disgusting part of this movie is the very unnecessary end...the way he showed all of hose black instances...it made me sicken...the NAACP along with other good people many were white also fought hard so our babies and their babies, wouldn't have to see this shyt, in a common media...they won that battle but he this idiot brings it back long after it no longer an issue even O.o i found Spike lees bamboozled the most insulting supposed to be entertaining derogatory thing I have ever saw in my 60 years, I hope that someone in the future do as the NAACP did and have it removed from available fair...so our great, great grandchildren will never even know what a Bamboozled was...I pray for this!

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.

'Bamboozled' is a great concept, but it doesn't really have strong enough material to sustain a film. I don't know what Spike Lee is trying to convey with this film. 'Bamboozled' isn't social commentary like Lee's other films although it tries to be. What is there to say about these minstrel shows? They were an ugly part of our American past, but they are far from being relevant now. Lee is trying to use them for something and what he is trying to use them for isn't all that clear. White guilt seems to be what is trying to be conveyed, but it isn't all that simple. The show is proposed by a black man named Pierre Delacroix. Is the film about African-Americans looking at this aspect of their past? But it isn't really their past is it? 'Bamboozled' is a really interesting concept for a film. It's the execution of the material that I wasn't all that fond of. I think what should have been done more with it though is to play it for laughs. I kept thinking of Mel Brook's 'The Producers'. In many ways 'Bamboozled' is a successor to that film. Pierre Delacroix wants nothing more to be fired, and instead "Mantan's New Millennium Ministrel Show" becomes a pop culture phenomenon. Lee is very good at playing up the absurdity of the scenario. I had the privilege of seeing this film with an audience in a Theater course. What Lee excels at is playing with the uncomfortably of seeing people in black face. I love the fact that Lee is very careful to show in the taping of "Mantan" that no white audience members laugh until the black audience members do. In ways that is the strongest aspect of the picture. The film becomes less interesting when when it gets smaller.For starters Pierre Delacroix is a weak character. Damon Wayans is performing a character with a horribly fake voice. He just seems like a skit character and his movements, his postures, and especially his voice seems like a caricature. I thought this may have been a conscious effort to fit in with the freak show mentality of the film, but I don't think so. For the most part Pierre is played pretty straight. I don't think Damon Wayans was right for the role. Perhaps Lee viewed the film as being a comedy, but it isn't comedic enough for Wayans to really offer anything to the character.This lack of direction plagues the film. The fact is you can't create a plausible world where minstrel shows could become popular in the 21st century. Lee exaggerates reality to the point where it is too far a stretch to take with the semi-serious tone of the film. It has great dark comedy in places, but it also has an unnecessary grim final act. I would look at the material much differently. If all Lee was interested in was attacking the notion of black face than he should have set his film in the olden times. I think the idea of a modern day minstrel show is ripe for satire, but the film is far too self important to pick at the notion. 'Bamboozled' believes it is a serious film, it has serious ideas, but it would work much better as a straight forward comedy. I think this is the kind of material I'd love to see Trey Parker or a Dave Chapelle handle. Lee likes to keep the drama in this hybrid and it hurts the final product and overall it hurts Lee's intent.