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.
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