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List Price: $24.98 | | Label: New Line Cinema
Salesrank: 21295
Released: April 17, 2001 |
| Our Price: $3.50 |
| Used Price: $2.99 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Spike Lee directs this sizzling satire on race and racism within the modern media world. Starring Damon Wayons (Major Payne TV's In Living Color) and Jada Pinkett-Smith (Set It Off Scream 2 The Nutty Professor)Running Time: 136 min.System Requirements:Starring: Damon Wayans Jada Pinkett-Smith Michael Rapaport Tommy Davidson and Savion Glover. Directed By: Spike Lee. Running Time: 136 Min. Color. This film is presented in "Widescreen" format. Copyright 2000 Warner Home Video.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: R UPC: 794043519727
Description of Bamboozled (New Line Platinum Series):
Director Spike Lee has never shied away from controversy, and with Bamboozled he tackles a thorny mix of racism and how images are bought and sold. A frustrated TV writer named Delacroix (Damon Wayans), unable to break his contract, tries to get fired by proposing a new minstrel show, complete with dancers in blackface. But the network loves the idea, and Delacroix hires two street performers (Savion Glover, who is truly the finest tap dancer since Fred Astaire, and Tommy Davidson) whose hunger for success and ignorance of history combine to make them accept the blackface. Despite protests, the show is a huge success--but gradually, the mental balance of everyone involved starts to crumble. As an argument, Bamboozled is incoherent--but how can racism be discussed rationally in the first place? Lee takes a much braver approach: Every time something seems to make sense or make a point, he complicates the situation. At one point, Delacroix goes to see his father, a standup comedian working at a small black club. Delacroix perceives his father as a broken failure. But his father's routine is full of articulate critiques of white hypocrisy, and the older man describes refusing to play the narrow movie roles that Hollywood had offered him, while Delacroix has convinced himself that his minstrel show is actually doing some social good. And what is the effect of the show itself? Lee obviously finds blackface abhorrent, but the minstrel routines are perversely fascinating and Glover's dancing, even when he mimics Amos and Andy-era routines, is outstanding. Most cuttingly, Lee points out parallels between minstrel and contemporary hip-hop personas. By the time it's over, Bamboozled won't have told you what to think, but you will have to think about these issues--and that alone is a remarkable accomplishment. --Bret Fetzer
Bamboozled (New Line Platinum Series) Reviews:
Entertaining, thought provoking, controversial All In One - Amazing 
2009-08-21 - Spike Lee is a genius, and this work provides direct evidence. The cast gives outstanding performances, the musical score is right on key, the editing is exceptional. There is so much substance in this film that it is necessary to watch it multiple times and discuss its content with friends and family. This film is a grand contribution to progressing the dialogue and modern social consciousness about race, creative freedom, and media culture in America.
Wretched piece of work, Lee's worst film, and one of the worst films I've ever seen... 
2009-02-06 - I saw this film in the theater when it came out, and sat in disgust and bewilderment at it. Recently, IFC showed it, and all those bad feelings came back. This is an awful film, possibly Spike Lee's worst "joint" (a stupid gimmick that he really should drop at this point), a real insult to people of ALL races. It's a ponderous, self important, heavy handed "satire" about corporate America, America itself, television, and the glorification of black stereotypes. It has awful performances, especially by Damon Wayans (who is a great comedic actor), who talks with an overblown, obvious fake accent. He's the TV network programmer who comes up with the idea of a modern day minstrel show for a programme. Michael Rappaport, another good actor, plays his boss, a clueless, cliched "ignorant white person who runs the corporation" here. In fact, most actors in this film are playing "types", not actual characters. The whole concept that the current day public would accept, a black TV programmer would propose, and a white executive would accept a minstrel show as a hit is preposterous. It's also deeply insulting to people of intelligence everywhere. Spike somehow thinks we're still in the days of D.W. Griffith, and blacks are being portrayed as ignorant and lazy, and all they want are watermelon and white women. This is so false. Now, one will argue that it's a satiric film, but it is not satiric. It is ugly, offensive to white and blacks, it is not funny, it's preachy. And the film itself looks awful. For some reason, Spike shot this on digital video, and it looks crummy, dark, and cheap. This is a really bad film from a filmmaker who has shown brilliance, but who also goes for cheap publicity (his recent dustup with Clint Eastwood is a great example of massive overreach), and makes some really misguided films. Bamboozled is an awful work, one of the worst films I've ever seen.
Bamboozled 
2009-01-12 - I ordered this one for a relative of mine who is a big Spike Lee fan. I kinda liked the film. but it could be somewhat offensive (imagine that)! As always I received the dvd well within the date of it's projected arrival. Amazon rocks for Christmas! I've done all my shopping with them this past holiday season and I have yet to be dissappointed.
Painful, Powerful. A Spike Lee Classic.
2008-05-17 - Angry, uneven, brilliant. . . This is not destined to be remembered as a great motion picture, but it sure is powerful. How do you even write about it? Spike Lee shoves everyone around, overturns tables, and leaves you to think about it all.
Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans) is a "negro" TV writer who is black enough to be upset about lack of representation of people of color in his business, but "white" enought to not understand fully the ramifications of what he does. His boss, Mr. Dunwitty (Michael Rappaport) is a white guy who thinks he's tuned into the black experience. Pierre decides, in protest, to revive an old time blackface minstrel show for modern television thinking that by sabatoging the TV programming he'll prove a point. The station goes for the idea. Pierre's conscience, personified by assistant Sloan Hopkins (Jada Pinkett Smith), protests.
And the public - enough of them at least - love the show.
What follows is a protracted (too long in my opinion), painful examination of historical racial stereotypes made modern. Savion Glover (the little kid from "Tap") and Tommy Davidson were so wonderful and sad as the minstrel show's blackfaced principals, "Mantan" and "Sleep 'n Eat." The first time the duo apply their blackface, it's revulsion toward the show itself. The second time, it's themselves they hate. Tommy's painful "it's showtime!" in the mirror to himself is a suffering for the sins of all people who would participate in such a spectacle.
For me, less would have been more with this film. Spike Lee disagrees and takes this show to the point that - in my opinion - the message gets muddied by excesses and moral high ground suffers in angry paroxysms, but it's his film and his anger.
But Lee is vindicated in the theme of the show and the general message that all of us can share in the racial difficulties in which we find ourselves and many of us are sheep.
Gotta gotta see this.
2008-03-28 - This is not your typical Spike Lee film, but perhaps his most important -- so important that the film is void of the director's ego for the most part. This film speaks about race issues in America, the unique issue of descendants of slavery fitting in to the culture that enslaved them, loving the hope that the country holds, yet not being given permission to hold residual pain and residual anger. It's a film about how the cultural norm creates and defines human beings who are other than the defining majority through objectification. It's a film about the stunning power of image and the media, especially when its creations are forwarded as politically neutral. Nothing I can write would be clearer than Lee's own words:
"The pain comes from looking at the images. How people of color in this case specifically African-Americans have been portrayed since the inception of film and also with radio with the Amos and Andy which was on film, radio, and television. Also we have to look at the way we portray black collectibles, when you see the dolls and the toothpaste and all the other things. You know, we're viewed as less than human, sub-human, and that stuff is painful. . . . There are certain things in this film where you want to laugh but at the same time you don't want to laugh because it's not funny. And it's . . . it's a very interesting phenomenon that happens in this film." --Spike Lee
"In doing the research [for the film] what hurt me was the depth that I saw. The hatred of us as a people. We saw the songs, when I see Bugs Bunny in blackface. I mean . . . I love Bugs Bunny. I had never seen him in blackface before. And Warner Brothers buried that, you know. And we wanted to include it in the film but they wouldn't let us. Bugs Bunny is an institution so they said hell no. But to see the depths to which America showed its hatred via radio, film, television, songs, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben. You know, Niggerhead Cornflakes, whatever you want to . . . you know. It's just amazing." -- Spike Lee
