Dolemite Is My Name

In the flat-out hilarious 1970s period piece “Dolemite Is My Name,” Murphy is the funniest he’s been since we last saw Sherman Klump and family in the early 2000s — but he’s equally effective in the handful of relatively low-key, dramatic moments. It’s a fully realized performance.

Murphy is back, and both his old gifts and some new ones are on engaging display in the rowdy, raunchy, inescapably funny Dolemite Is My Name, a gleefully profane biopic and a passion project the star has been nurturing for years.

Dolemite Is My Name belongs to Murphy.

It’s a strong performance of a character worthy of biopic treatment. Dolemite lives!

Essential to the film’s success is Murphy, clearly having his best time in a long time as Moore, who adopted a flashy pimp-esque persona that would eventually take the blaxploitation landscape by storm.

After its promising first act, Craig Brewer’s film becomes a series of fleeting bits, allowing questions to pile up.

Its main virtue is that it provides Murphy with a juicy role.

May be Eddies best performance ever. Oscar performance. Excellent seasoned actor and still funny.

Eddie Murphy digs up a cult classic, reviving Rudy Ray Moore's bombastic, smooth-talking '70s street hero in this tongue-in-cheek backstage fauxposé. Struggling to find a foothold in his mid-forties, Moore resuscitated his stand-up comedy act as Dolemite, the envelope-pushing pimp with a distinguished wardrobe, harsh vocabulary and volumes of off-color anecdotes. Murphy's career hasn't quite followed the same trajectory, but it's wound up in a similar place: listless and lost as father time steals meaningful glances at his wristwatch. The role is fitting, and he's good in it, if not blow-away good. It's no mail-in, but the performance isn't likely to remind anyone of his well-remembered, energetic early roles, and it had the potential to do just that. Eddie walks the walk and talks the talk, but there's a lack of sincerity in his eyes, a reluctance to really cut loose and go wild, that gives the impression this is just another role. At least, that's true when he's playing Moore as Dolemite. His less-frequent takes on the unguarded comedian himself are more subdued and vulnerable. There's an especially sweet chemistry in his platonic friendship with Lady Reed (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), a dynamite pairing on-stage and off, that brings out the best in both. That's where the good stuff lives, and though we get a fair amount of it, I still wanted more. A funny movie, but essentially a rehash. As with The Disaster Artist a few years ago, I couldn't help noting that most of Dolemite's biggest laughs are just polished re-creations of classic bits that worked better in their original low-fi form. Points for turning newer audiences on to the material, at any rate.

"Rudy Continued **** Up **** Until The Day He Died." A real fun time, not a masterpiece by any chance but definantly one of the better Netflix originals. Really great to see Eddie Murphy back after such a long absence and bring his a-game for Rudy Ray Moore aka Dolemite. It's on Netflix right now guys I mean come on, check it out! 6/10 Jay x

Obviously I don't "get it." I found nothing whatsoever funny in this movie. Not a chuckle, nothing. One of the single most boring films I've watched in a while. After 45 minutes my wife said she'll watch it by herself. She didn't laugh either, but I guess she thought she should like it.

Disgustingly foul mouthed and poorly acted piece of trash—unwatchable. The joke is on the audience for actually watching this film. How many times per minute can you use **** “mother****er”, or “****” before it becomes the signature component of the film? Perhaps being incredibly offensive was Murphy’s point—meanwhile the critics fawn over god awful acting. “Dolemite’s my name and **** up **** is my ****, I want to bring my family to see this trash.