Few filmmakers have as distinct a voice as the one that comes from the work of Spike Lee.  Throughout his career, he’s veered between comedy to drama to thriller, sometimes within the same film, and somehow managed to make every title that bears his name distinctly his own.  As a result, Lee’s films are composed almost entirely of scenes that are either brilliant and truly memorable or preachy and almost painful to watch in their awkwardness.  His best works (Do The Right Thing, the underrated Girl 6) incorporate personal style with social content effortlessly, while his least (Summer of Sam, Jungle Fever) pile on extremes without the humor or context to back them up.

    Though most of his earlier films have over-exaggerated scenes with an obvious satirical tone, Bamboozled is Lee’s first attempt at feature-length satire.  Damon Wayons plays Pierre Delacroix, an intelligent, well-spoken (though slightly humorless) television executive with the distinction of being the sole black man at the SBC network.  His boss (Michael Rappaport) is anxious for Delacroix to come up with an idea for the network to cash in on the huge black American audience, but disregards his ideas regarding black people of upper-middle class stature in favor of something a little “more ghetto.”  Out of spite, Delacroix proposes an old-time minstrel show set on a plantation with the leads in blackface.

    Much to the chagrin of Delacroix, his personal assistant (Jada Pinkett-Smith) and the show’s two stars (Tommy Davidson as “Sleep’n’Eat” and tap dancer Savion Glover as Mantan, named after famed 30’s black character actor Mantan Mooreland), the pilot gets picked up.  Critics praise it for its’ audacity and the show becomes a ratings giant despite protests by black rights organizations, ‘s brother’s rap group and Al Sharpton (in a cameo).

    Bamboozled’s main theme, an analysis of the portrayal of black images in the media, is a fine idea for satire and, in some ways, Lee is up to the task.  Some scenes, especially those set in the network’s offices, come off as brilliantly funny, and Pinkett-Smith, Glover and Rappaport seem perfectly comfortable with the cinema verite feel that the digital video-shot film maintains much of the time.

    Unfortunately, the center of the film, Delacroix, is another matter.  As played by Wayans, Delacroix comes off as pure caricature, like an “In Living Color” parody of a black person trying to act the part of a “white” executive.   This would be fine (satire, after all, thrives on overinflating stereotypes), except that you’re never quite sure where Delacroix is coming from.  His rejected ideas all have to do with a black man involved with others of different races (where, it is presumed, race would not only be an issue but the entire point), and he never really comes off as being in any position to judge others’ views of racial conflict.

    Even with a more rationalized lead, Bamboozled would have collapsed under its’ own weight anyway.  At over two and a quarter hours, the film runs out of satirical ideas a little past the halfway mark and resorts to cheap (albeit effective) shock tactics to finish things off.  In addition, while Lee’s use of film clips from the black stereotype images of the first half of the century are effective, they probably would have been more useful if interspersed with the occasional footage of similar images from near-present films and TV shows, thus observing how much we have—or haven’t—come.

    While Bamboozled hits several wrong buttons and ultimately fails to be the Network-witted media satire it aspires to be, it’s still an interesting film and deserves to be seen.  A bold failure is more interesting than a “safe” success, and Lee has proven once again that he’s willing to take chances few other filmmakers would go near.
 

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