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Bamboozled | bam_l
OLD SONG AND DANCE ''Bamboozled'''s stars put on their best blackface for the new age minstrel show
Bamboozled: David Lee

Credits

Release Date: Oct 20, 2000; Rated: R; Video Release Date: Apr 17, 2001; Genres: Comedy, Drama; With: Savion Glover, Jada Pinkett Smith and Damon Wayans; Distributor: New Line Cinema
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By Troy Patterson
Troy Patterson
Troy Patterson is a critic for EW. He lives in Brooklyn.

After repeated viewings, Bamboozled -- Spike Lee's Godard style blast of social commentary -- still seems to be both his subtlest movie and his most ham-handed, as well as his most personal. It is an essay in the form of a media satire: Seeking to destroy his own career, Wayans' network executive dreams up a sketch show performed in blackface (by success hungry street artists played, with savvy scrappiness, by Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson), a premise which sets up rude riffing on the bizarre racial negotiations that define identity in America.

The movie's trigger-happy conclusion still feels like a narrative cop-out, and its backstage melodrama romance still looks like clutter. But on its own terms -- those of social critique and nightmare absurdism -- ''Bamboozled'' holds up as wondrous pop agitprop.


Posted Apr 17, 2001
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