Bamboozled

Starring: Damon Wayans, Savion Glover Director: Spike Lee Original UK Premiere: 2001 Dvd Release: 16th July, 2001 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen, Region 2 Encoding Subtitled In: English

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Bamboozled is a 2000 satirical film written & directed by Spike Lee about a modern televised minstrel show featuring black actors donning blackface makeup. Pierre Delacroix, played by Damon Wayans, is a Harvard-educated black man working for a television network & proposes the minstrel show to solve the networks ratings slump. Delacroix boss, Thomas Dunwitty, played by Michael Rapaport, is a white man who claims he can use the word nigger since he is married to a black woman. Delacroix proposes the show because he would like to quit but quitting the network would put him in violation of contract & so he would rather be fired. Delacroix hires two black men off the street to tapdance & banter, in accordance with minstrel tradition & expects the show to be controversial. Instead, the show is a wild success. The content is heavily satirical, showing the characters all in blackface in a rural setting in a cotton field with plentiful watermelons. The Roots have a role as the shows house band, The Alabama Porch Monkeys.

DVD Extras: the many extras include Lee's informative audio commentary on the film & a 50-minute making of documentary, plus 10 scenes deleted from the final version, some posters, a couple of music videos & the theatrical trailer.

Bamboozled is that rarity in Hollywood cinema, a sharp but subtle satire by Spike Lee, Americas most important black director. A TV producer trying to expose the racism of his corporation conceives an idea for a new show. Its back to the Black & White Minstrels, reincarnated in glorious colour. He cant believe it when his ironic suggestion is taken up by the company & becomes a huge hit. Lee manages to show us just whats wrong with stereotypes of blacks, & yet acknowledge just how easily even black people themselves can be seduced by them. Its a pity about the ending, which explodes in a hail of bullets, quite inappropriately for such a film, but up till then there are plenty of laughs & much food for thought.

Damon Wayans, one of the Wayans brothers, is a stand-up comedian, writer & actor. He was on Saturday Night Live briefly, before getting fired for changing character while on-air. He went on to do In Living Color from 1990 to 1992, part of a team that was nominated for Emmy Awards all three years. He produced Waynehead, a cartoon for the WB, losely based on his own childhood growing up in a large family, starring a poor boy with a clubfoot. It only lasted a season. Wayans currently stars as the father in the ABC sitcom My Wife & Kids. In 1999 his New York Times bestseller called Bootleg was published; it is a humorous compilation of his observations about family, children, marriage & politics. Posters Of Marci X

Editors Choice: Marci X, Bamboozled, Bulletproof, Celtic Pride, Major Payne, The Last Boy Scout, Sports Illustrated, View DVDology

Shelton Jackson Lee, better known as Spike Lee, is an African American film director & actor noted for his bold, overtly political films. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, his family moved to Brooklyn, New York when he was still very young. He developed his film skills at Morehouse College, Atlanta & the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 1982. In Paris, France, in 2003, Mr. Lee received an honorary Cesar Award for Lifetime Achievement in the film industry. Critics accuse Lee of being sappy & manipulative & of catering to a mostly white audience. Additionally his films are often called unrealistic, especially in their dialogue & his early ones in particular are accused of playing like an after school special. Much is made of the fact that as a child he went to an expensive private school, to suggest an irony in his making films about poverty. In 2003 Lee sued the Spike TV television network claiming that they were capitalizing on his fame by using his name for their network. The claim was settled out of court.

Editors Choice: The 25th Hour, Bamboozled, Summer Of Sam, Four Little Girls, Malcolm X, Shes Gotta Have It, Lumiere And Company, View DVDology

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