POOTIE TANG (2001)

How awesome is Pootie Tang, the trash-talking fashion-plate street-rap superhero? He's so awesome that when he records a new single that consists, literally, of silence (complete with mimed gospel screams in the recording studio), the entire world is enthralled. That's a gag as synthetically broad as anything in Dude, Where's My Car?, and the amiably silly Pootie Tang offers more of the same. As Pootie, who speaks in an incomprehensible argot of hip-hop baby talk (''I'm gonna sine your pitty on the runny kine! Sipi-tai!''), Lance Crouther suggests the young Billy Dee Williams dolled up like Busta Rhymes playing a daffy Sean Combs in a 21st-century spoof of Superfly. Chris Rock served as one of the film's producers (he makes several on-screen appearances as well), and as brilliant as Rock can be, this material is a reflection of his shallow, moralistic side; it defangs its target instead of savaging it. The name ''Pootie Tang'' is bandied about so often that you may feel like stopping the movie to say, ''Joke received.''

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