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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Salesrank: 15905
Released: July 24, 2001 |
| Our Price: $6.97 |
| Used Price: $5.17 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
The best example of urban guerilla filmmaking is ironicallyand happilyalso one of Hollywood'smost triumphant success stories. Actor Robert Townsend (I'm Gonna Git You Sucka!), decrying the lack of good roles for black actors, puts his money where his mouth is and co-scripts (with Keenen Ivory Wayans), directs and stars in this "exuberant, tirelessly energetic, funny, appealingly mean-spirited and easy-to-like" comedy (Janet Maslin, The New York Times) that took Tinseltown by storm! Actor wannabe Bobby Taylor (Townsend) dreams of landing a role any role. But in a town where the best black roles are usually jive-talkin' gangsta stereotypes, Bobby learns that you have to make your own partseven if they're just in your head. Spoofing everything from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and Eddie Murphy to Siskel & Ebert, Bobby's vivid imaginationand Hollywood Shuffleare "an exhilarating blast" (New York)!
Description of Hollywood Shuffle:
The alumni of Hollywood Shuffle are spread across dozens of current comedies and TV sitcoms--this is the movie that introduced Robert Townsend and the Wayans Brothers to the world. Townsend plays a young actor who struggles with being offered stereotyped street hustler roles while trying to maintain his self-respect and the approval of his family. Between scenes of comically humiliating auditions, Bobby has satirical fantasies about the plight of black actors, including the classic "Black Acting School" sketch, in which white teachers demonstrate jive talk and street moves for the befuddled black students. Townsend has a charming, low-key comic style, one considerably more subtle than that of some of the black comics who have risen to success with supposedly self-aware renditions of the stereotypes Townsend mocks. Townsend made this movie on his credit cards and it is clearly a heartfelt labor of love. --Bret Fetzer
Hollywood Shuffle Reviews:
A classic 
2009-11-28 - In my eyes a classic comedy of a holloywood actor prior to him becoming famous. It's funny, whitty, & an overall good flick.
so very very funny and very very true
2009-06-22 - "Hollywood Shuffle" remains, even after two decades, a remarkable achievement. This is both hilarious and poignant at the same time. And the characters are rich and multidimensional: the wanna-be-actor forced to take parts that are inappropriate to even approximate his dreams, the practical grandmother invoking career opportunities at the post office in the name of family security, and household youngsters, looking at the older children as models and stars, their own little lights to guide their futures. The arc of the question of human dignity versus the omnipresence of stereotypes, lack of opportunity, and economic necessity is classical human drama of man versus fate and himself drawn with an expertise that is remarkable.
And the fantasy scenes are some of the best comic inversion ever put on film. The white-persons school of black acting will make your sides ache, and you'll rewind it a dozen times.
While there are some flaws in overly constructed dialogue, and some clear budget constraints on production, and some hits and misses on topical and sense of humor, this is a highly recommended film that speaks as loudly today as it did upon first viewing.
A classic gem.
Hella funny! Still
2008-12-24 - Between the Afro and Hoe cakes...to, to funny. Years later my friend and I were seriously cracking up. Two thumbs up!
Classic Comedy
2008-11-23 - My husband and I watched this movie weekly for several months when it first came out. I still find myself quoting lines at times. I hope things in Hollywood have changed in the last 20 plus years. But thanks to Robert Townsend this is a hilarious movie that I'm happy to now find in DVD.
Winky Dinky Delicious!
2008-09-05 - lt could've used more Eddie Murphy type humor. You'll be BATTY BATTY BATTY over this tounge in cheek expose of despite leaps and bounds that Afro-Americans have made in ''the biz'', from their point of view, Townsend explains that they've gone from point A to point A.OOOO1 and point B still seems light years away.
Sit back and relax with a plate full of ho-cakes.
