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47 out of 58 people found the following review useful:
Great satire, very misunderstood, 9 August 2004

Author: JonTMarin (JonTMarin88@hotmail.com) from New York

The film "Bamboozled" has caught a lot of heat for it's portrayal of blackface (an issue that wasn't really talked about until the release of "Bamboozled") Writer Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans) sees his pitches for TV shows being rejected one after another. He is upset with his job and his boss Thomas Dunwitty (Mike Rappaport) He is under contract, he cannot quit because he will be sued. So he decides to get himself fired. He plans on reviving blackface and hopes that it'll be so controversial that CNS will be under fire and he'll get fired. He recruits two street performers Manray (Savion Glover) and Womack (Tommy Davidson) and pitches the show to his boss. The show gets green lighted, but unfortunately it becomes a big hit and destroys his whole plan. Spike got some heat for this (mainly because he criticized previous films for the way blacks are shown, then he made a film with blackface) But what people don't understand is that this is a satire. The images of rappers and "Timmi Hillnigger" are all poking fun at today's society. "Bamboozled" is clever and one of Spike's most explosive films next to "Do the Right Thing" and "Malcolm X". This film has Tommy Davidson performing in blackface, in a very funny routine. I wanted to laugh but at the same time it made me think. This sketch was making me laugh at every stereotype about my people that I hated. That was the smart thing about "Bamboozled", it caught you in the act of doing something and made you think. "Bamboozled" is a well thought, mentally challenging film that'll change your life.

Bamboozled- rated R **** out of ****

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38 out of 51 people found the following review useful:
A fireball of a movie, 11 November 2001

Author: zetes from Saint Paul, MN

I am absolutely embarrassed right now that I have never watched a Spike Lee film before. I have always wanted to see Do the Right Thing, which is generally considered his best film, and I even rented it once, but never got around to watching it. When Bamboozled opened last year, it sounded very interesting, but after the critics dismissed it as a failed attempt at satire, I decided to catch it later on, perhaps after I saw Do the Right Thing. Then I saw it was going to be played on television, so I found the time and sat down to watch. What I saw was something absolutely amazing.

And that's not to say that Bamboozled doesn't have its flaws. I would personally deem it a flawed masterpiece, a very flawed masterpiece. The critics were right: Lee's satire is misplaced. He's far too hotheaded an artist to have realized this immediately, but he should have when the New York Times refused to run the movie's add, which depicted a sambo character eating a watermelon, because they feared protests. Bamboozled asks us to suspend our disbelief - a disbelief which Spike Lee may not have had himself - and accept that a TV network would produce the New Millennium Minstrel Show and that the public, a la Mel Brooks' The Producers, would eat it up. Lee's argument in the press is that this was already happening. His targets were rap videos and a show on the WB network that only produced something like 6 episodes (the show was about Abe Lincoln's black servant who single-handedly ran the country; Lincoln was the buffoon). The reason that the New York Times didn't run Lee's add is the exact same reason Lee wrote the film in the first place: African American political activists, including Lee, often have very knee-jerk reactions to such things. The show about Lincoln, which Lee argued was set during the "holocaust" of his people, actually showed the white people to be the buffoons and the blacks to be their manipulators. He missed the point (which could very well have been due to the fact that the show sucked anyhow). Add to this the fact that, besides clips of Good Times and The Jeffersons, both of which, I ought to add (in my own opinion), Lee is taking out of context (he would have been much better off to feature Diff'rent Strokes, which is somewhat offensive), all of the clips he uses to demonstrate the abuse of his race must have been downright difficult to dig out of film archives. None of these cartoons or movies that are shown, nor most of the sambo toys, have been seen for some thirty years or more, most probably not since before Spike Lee was born. We all know they exist, and, as Sloan (Jada Pinkett Smith) says in the film, we oughtn't to forget whether we're black or white, but it doesn't work as satire to show these things. They aren't at all harmful now, not until you drag them up again. Then they're only offensive when knees start jerking.

None of this matters, in fact. Not to me, anyway. In my opinion, film today has become far too complacent. Bamboozled is an enormous jolt to our current, apathetic world. The fight may be misdirected and wholly fabricated by a paranoid man, but Spike Lee is indeed a masterful director. In fact, I would very favorably compare this film to Jean-Luc Godard's Le Week-End, which was also somewhat misdirected in its satire. Both of these films are excellent. Bamboozled moves with a speed and passion almost completely foreign to the world of filmmaking today. It's angry, it's brazen, and it makes your heart pound with fear, sadness, and intensity. It also raises more difficult issues than any film I've seen in a very long time. It manages to do this while remaining funny, too, although I was always wondering whether Spike Lee would slap me for laughing at this stuff. I especially loved the Tommi Hilnigger Jeans commercial. But even the New Millennium Minstrel Show is presented in a humorous way. A lesser artist, I believe, would have made it more clearly offensive. As it stands, it's difficult not to laugh at Mantan and Sleep-N-Eat (probably the most jaw-droppingly funny and ballsy name I've ever heard) as they perform. Tommy Davidson and Crispin Glover put enough energy in these stage performances to electrocute you. Their performances are awesome - often the dialogue they do have is cliched, but in many small moments their faces clearly express, and subtly, too, how their lives are crumbling. I would also like to compliment Jada Pinkett Smith, who turns in the film's finest performance. I have a feeling she's just going to get better and better, if someone would give her another decent role. Michael Rapaport, although perhaps a little too cartoony, is still very funny. Damon Wayans has the most difficult part. I'll bet money that he and Lee KNEW that the critics would immediately jump on Wayans' fake white accent. I can't imagine they thought it was all that funny or believable. However, I'm not sure why they did it. It does detract a little from the film, though not as much as many critics claimed it does. Personally, I would have either had that accent fade as the film went on. It sounds especially bad when it comes back at the end, after all those powerful (if pointless) scenes of African Americans in the cinema. Although, as that very phony voice is brought back, we recall the way the film began...

Other aspects of the filmmaking are excellent as well. I have already praised Lee's direction. It is quickly paced and he really knows how to move his camera. The editing is fantastic. A powerful rhythm is established right away and never abandoned. In fact, the film pulls a daring change from satire to melodrama about halfway through, another aspect of the film that people complained on end about. It is all done with gusto, especially in the editing. The cinematography - wow! This and Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark show how worthwhile digital video is. Lee and his DP use it to an amazing degree! When characters are moving fast, which happens most often when Mantan is tap-dancing, a blur is left on the screen for a split second. Late in the film, when Mantan is trying to free himself from the show, Lee causes these blurs to remain onscreen for a prolonged period of time. The effect is simply powerful. One major complaint I have is the score. It's often manipulative. I think it would have been better to have had a minimalist score, which would have made the film seem even more immediate.

Like I said, there are many major and legitimate complaints against Bamboozled, but critics and audiences forgot what's going for it: it is EXCELLENT CINEMA. 9/10.

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46 out of 70 people found the following review useful:
Scary, 8 March 2002

Author: esbenpost from copenhagen, DK

Being white, and european, I'm not really sure about the point of this movie seen in an american perspective. But as a european it really opened my eyes to a strange fact: if your only knowledge about black America comes from television, you WOULD really think, that all afro-americans were gangsters, rappers or Urkel-like comedians, that is: stereotypes. You very rarely see an american show, or movie, where a black american is portrayed as a complex human being. And that really IS scary.

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33 out of 47 people found the following review useful:
This masterpiece left me speechless, 11 October 2000
Author: Debra English (tweetybir@algorithms.com)

I was lucky enough to see the Philadelphia premiere of this movie at the U. of Penn, with Spike Lee in attendance, and I left the theatre feeling almost speechless. I've seen most of Lee's films and have mixed emotions and reviews of each of them; however, this film is truly a MASTERPIECE of filmmaking. Without giving away the many-layered plot, which must be experienced to be appreciated, the subject is a touchy one --- controversial and poignant, embarrassing and humiliating, enlightening and insightful. Mainstream white audiences ( of which I am a part ) may find the subject to be uncomfortable --- obviously one of Lee's goals here --- and all audiences will find certain parts of the movie to be terrifying. Besides the storyline, the acting is wonderful across the board, and Daman Wayans deserves an Academy Award for his over-the-top role. Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" should go down in history as one of the most important films about race vs. social status and the misconceptions and stereotypes that surround them, as well as being a magnificent movie about popular culture and the almighty dollar. It is alternatingly hysterical, contemplative, witty and violent, and I left the theatre in tears, totally speechless. Unfortunately, this will probably be a short-lived film in your local cineplex, but hopefully it will gain enough serious attention to win the accolades it deserves, as well as open some closed eyes and minds.

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20 out of 26 people found the following review useful:
Finally, the Truth has been revealed... in White and Blackface!, 21 October 2000

Author: Nola Narton from Cambridge, MA

I approached this film with trepidation due to the mixed reviews(in particular, the flat-out negative review of Ebert at the Movies). Knowing Lee's penchant for controversy, but knowing also his unflinching honesty and passion about his position, I decided to give this film a chance.

I consider myself an educated, articulate, middle-class black-american. And I was wary of Lee's supposed satire which centers on the creation of Minstrel show for the new millenium. By the time I credits rolled, I was applauding.

In this film, Lee takes no prisoners, he neither excuses the white establishment for its entrenched and hard-to-expose racism nor does he excuse the blacks and other non-whites who become the literal agents of this process.

This story of two young black men's rise to financial and commercial glory through demeaning themselves, their talent and by example the group of people from which they hail, is an allegory. Rather than getting stuck in a discussion of this film's form, viewers should consider what it means about the world around them.

The disturbing and unnerving finale, is a suitable response to our rising awareness of inner-city violence, hip-hop culture, the prison industrial complex, and the police state in which many blacks, poor or not, find themselves a part. Instead of offering us solutions this film offers us, as in many other of Lee's films, a wake up call.

As in the body of Lee's work, the camera work gives a gritty cinema verite feel to the scenes, and the performances of Glover, Davidson, Pinkett, Wayans, and Rappaport are dead-on. The cast has a good chemistry and the dialogue will have have you howling with disbelief and laughter.

An incredibly important film, for any consumer, and by definition, any creator of popular culture who may be responsible for the perpetuation and dissemination of DAMAGING and DEGRADING stereotypes. Thank you, Mr. Lee.

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14 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
Lee's best film..., 22 July 2006

Author: jhscott1208 from United States

This is Lee's best film. It isn't heavy handed despite the explosive topic. In fact I would argue that the images in this film are less offensive then some of the depiction of African-American life seen on MTV or BET. Less heavy handed then some of the vulgar depiction of my community that is allowed to be foisted on my community as entertainment. The modern minstrels show can be seen any night of the week on America's cable music networks. Which is more embarrassing Lil'John, 50 cent or Mantan? Which has had a bigger impact on the daily lives of African-American children, images of Step- N-Fetch it or Lil'John? Which are the stereotypes that are used to justify racial profiling in the larger public of the country in 2006, Gangstas or minstrels performers? It is a film about the power and responsibility of black America to control the images that define it.

I think Lee for the first time in a long time had a story he actually wanted to tell. The script was solid if not great. As usual Spike had a tough time with his female characters. The women in his films tend to be two dimensional. All good or all bad. It wasn't a perfect film but I think it will be remembered as one of Spike's most interesting.

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4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
I think Spike Lee is scratching the surface of great satire but the film is cloudy and has no real message, 6 March 2010

Author: DarthVoorhees from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

'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.

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5 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
fascinating failure, 4 June 2005
Author: rxw from San Francisco, US

first, the criticisms:

the acting is bad. the camera-work is only competent. the narrative is weak.

now the praise: my jaw dropped a number of times during the viewing. I couldn't believe I was watching an American movie. more so than other movies, bamboozled is entirely a result of entertainment. the world the movie depicts is centered on a TV network (entertainment producers and distributors), the narrative within the movie looks at entertainment (they're making a TV show!), and there is the film itself (which is entertainment).

but the things the actors say! if there is such a thing as a monolithic white America and a monolithic black America, many many lines that spike wrote can NOT be said in polite company.

and the events that transpire! the very idea of a c.2000 minstrel show is enough to provoke discussion and examination. the non stop barrage of highly charged race signifiers (speech, clothes, ideas, the blackface fabrication and application, etc) contributed to a very specific tone of outrage and cynicism. so it's fascinating because it's brilliantly done. but it's a failure because it's not quite a movie. could spike really have intended to make a satire of a movie, where the story of the movie is to make a satire on TV?

in short, the (often intense) reaction this movie engenders is worthwhile in itself. however, the movie feels to me like an intentioned, crafted harangue, which lowers its worth as entertainment, and establishes itself as a diatribe.

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8 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
such a mind-boggling shame because of the huge amount of ideas (some not bad) throughout, 11 July 2008

Author: MisterWhiplash from United States

To give credit where it's due, Spike Lee is a genuine article, someone who came out of NYU and became one of the most recognizable personalities in film-making. His voice is his own, and whether working for a studio or on more independent terms it's always a "Joint". Is this always a marker of him hitting it out of the park every time? Not really. As if he was Jean-Luc Godard among the black filmmaker's circle, when he's on fire he's surely hot, and when he's not it's f***ing horrifying to see him fail. Bamboozled is one of those latter times, and it's so flawed in so many ways that it's a wonder that some of the good ideas come through in the mid-section. It's the kind of movie where one may like it more for what it could have been rather than what it is.

Bamboozled is meant to be, as Lee's character Delacroix (Damon Wayans) points out more than once both to the audience in dictionary definition and layman's terms, a satire. Thanks for the reminder, Spike! This is all well and good, but it's ultimately misguided and without a really solid comic viewpoint. In essence what Lee is after is a premise sort of out of Mel Brooks's the Producers; a creative guy down on his luck finds something to push that he thinks is so offensive and terrible that it won't run for very long, only to find that it becomes a surprise smash hit. Where Brooks had really funny and spot-on casting with Mostel and Wilder and characters to care about in their lunacy, Lee makes it a total mish-mash that is unnerving. And for every little moment, like the "ads" for the likes of Timmy Hill(n-word), there are a lot of satirical targets that just fall flat.

But back to the casting for a moment: Damon Wayans, both his performance and his character of Delacroix, is a total disaster. Maybe Wayans has done some good work in the past (ironically, as it's mentioned in the film as a point of reference for black variety shows, in In Living Color), but he makes the character sound totally off-key, sounding like a nerd with a bad accent and with mannerisms that are just awful. Whether or not the blame is Wayans or Lee's writing and direction is a 50/50 split; others like Davidson and Glover fare a little better, and Jada Pinkett Smith arguably delivers the best non-unreal performance of the lot. And Mos Def basically hadn't really become an actor quite yet, so his turn here is mostly as a spoof (a flat one at that as a gangster rapper). And don't get me started on Michael Rappaport, ugh!

Bamboozled goes up and down in its level of pretentiousness and ineptitude: for the first half an hour I wondered if I was really watching a movie by Spike "Do the Right Thing" Lee, as it's mostly shot in mini-DV camera style like some amateurs from a college film program in their first year. It doesn't even FEEL like any semblance of a real movie, save for some attempts at moving the plot forward (Rappaport's insistence on getting more "edgy" black images on TV to Delacroix, who responds with his brilliant put-on), until about forty-five minutes in. Then it starts to get slightly more interesting, though still problematic in filming style and performances (albeit I did enjoy, as filmed in 16mm, the Mantan sequences as a hyper-stylized set-piece, and the one scene with Delacroix and his stand-up comic father played by Paul Mooney).

But as Lee's polemic grows more dire and more serious, and as the circumstances of Womack and Manray's disagreement about what they're doing leads to a somewhat predictable, horribly melodramatic and preachy finale, I was ready to chuck my diet coke at the screen. Yet I stuck through to the end, and realized something during the final five or so minutes as the cavalcade of images in montage went by of American TV and movie history of black stereotypes (including the infamous Birth of a Nation racism); had Lee done much of what he's presented in Bamboozled as a real documentary- which is just as much if not more-so history lesson than satire- then he might be on to something with a better grip on minstrel shows and media-stereotypes. Instead, as with She Hate Me (though in a way not as entertainingly in a bad-movie sort of way), Lee vomits up all of his ideas in a spastic narrative, and only a few of them stick out. When they do stick out, it's cool to watch. When they don't, it's tiresome, scatter-shot, and ultimately very faulty in execution. 4.5/10

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9 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
Uneven but interesting, 31 May 2004

Author: RDenial from Detroit

This could have been a brilliant film. The problem I had with this film is that Spike Lee had too many ideas he was trying to pursue, and should have kept to the single focus. Yet, there were some brilliant scenes. We see a black gangsta group of hip-hoppers and one scene shows a member drinking out of a bottle shaped like a rocket. Later on we see a commercial for this product. Subtle and interesting. The film clips from old films and the display of of toys during the endtitles, were fascinating and could have made an interesting documentary.

One thing I didn't like, besides the stereotypical white bigots, was Lee's focusing upon 40s black comedian Mantan Moreland as the epitome of black humiliation. Moreland was a brilliant comic who stole the show from the white actors of the day. Whites and Blacks turned against Moreland during the civil rights movement and the man could hardly make ends meet. Before he died in the early 70s, opinion changed again and he was seen as a pioneer. He once again managed to get some work in films and tv before his death. A better target for Lee should have been Stepin Fletchit, who made a career out of playing a lazy black freeloader.

I have to agree with Lee on hip-hop as a minstrel show. The gold chains, oversized sport jerseys, and baseball caps worn sideways are clownish and not far removed from the olden days when blacks played buffoons to entertain white people. The show is still going on....

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