Grade:A-

What’s it About?
A former CIA agent cleans up the streets and uncovers a conspiracy in this parody of 1970s blaxploitation films.

What’s It’s Bechdel Test Score?
1/3 – failure.

What About Minorities?
A.
Being a parody of blaxploitation films, the protagonist and almost all the other characters are minorities. Everybody’s stereotyped, but it’s all in good fun.

So…

Black Dynamite is certainly the funniest film I’ve seen so far in 2010, and it’s probably the funniest film I’ve seen in 2009 as well. My face hurt from smiling so much during the movie. Almost every single line was a joke – either in the context of the story, or as part of the parody. When there wasn’t a dialogue joke there was some visual gag, and the whole thing was so un-showy and un-self-conscious and it just got it right.

I had the good fortune to be able to see Black Dynamite as part of a Black History in Film Festival event at the Rio Theatre in Vancouver. I say good fortune because Black Dynamite never got a wide released in Canada, and from my understanding it didn’t reach many places in the United States. It did the festival circuit last year to great acclaim, even getting three stars from Roger Ebert. Yet, it as hard to find a distributor to send this to Canada because it is believed that there aren’t enough black people in Canada to see these movies, and that nobody else would be interested. There might not be as big a black community in Western Canada than in parts of the States, but there is certainly a large black community out East, especially Toronto. I really don’t think it would’ve sunk them to send a print to Ontario.

Anyways, this movie is crazy funny. The plot is pretty predictable, and completely over the top, and I didn’t care that much for the final twist in the conspiracy. But Black Dynamite himself is such an archetypal hero in such a high stakes, out of control situation that you can’t help but feel a little bit of hero worship. It speaks to that very simplistic side of us that wants someone big and strong and uncompromising to just sort all this shit out.

My favourite aspect of the film was all the meta film jokes and all the things that made this a parody of blaxploitation. There is a minor character whose actor reads out his action lines with his dialogue. There are a million strategically placed on-purpose continuity errors. The lyrics of the music spell out what’s happening on screen. The blue-screen driving scene is fantastic and hilarious. I haven’t actually laughed out loud at a movie that much in a very long time.

And it’s so lovingly done. I’m by no means an expert on blaxploitation films, but it seems like they came at a time where black representation on film was sketchy to nil, and here were these films that actually addressed problems black communities were having at the time that weren’t being addressed by mainstream films. They had charismatic archetypal heroes that people really needed in their own context, more so than they needed, say, Han Solo. So these movies were perhaps low budget and poorly made, they satisfied a need. It’s so easy to just laugh at them now, but I think Black Dynamite laughs at them in a very loving, gracious way.

While I’m sure there are reasons to dislike this movie, it’s just too fun and funny to worry about those. It delivers exactly what it promises, has some pretty great performances (it’s difficult to act badly on purpose), and never drags or gets too stupid. (I mean, it gets pretty stupid sometimes, but it’s in a good range.)

It’s obviously not for everybody. It is definitely not a great example of something with good female characters, but I can let that slide given what it’s a parody of. I still enjoyed it, a lot more than some other movies in the past few months. I only had a passing familiarity with blaxploitation – mostly from MadTV sketches – but I think if somebody had no familiarity with the genre, or actively disliked the genre, they probably wouldn’t get very much out of this movie.

For everyone else though, I’d totally recommend it. Here’s hoping you can get the DVD easily!