Richard sits in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres, VOD and streaming services including Disney’s animated action flick “Raya and the Last Dragon” (Disney+ with Premier Access and theatres), the long awaited sequel “Coming 2 America” (Amazon Prime Video), the biopic “The United States Vs. Billie Holiday” (VOD), the legal drama “The Mauritanian” (premium digital and on-demand), the coming-of-age story “My Salinger Year” (VOD) and the look at the war on drugs “Crisis” (on digital and demand).
“Coming 2 America,” the thirty-three-years-in-the-making sequel to the Eddie Murphy hit, now streaming on Amazon Prime, may be the peak pandemic film. It’s a blast of nostalgia for those who seek comfort in the familiar when the world seems to have gone mad, tempered with a new, updated attitude.
Murphy and Arsenio Hall return as newly-crowned King Akeem Joffer of Zamunda and his confidante Semmi (among at least a half dozen other characters they play). The African nation is still a paradise where Akeem, his wife Queen Lisa Joffer (Shari Headley) and three daughters,
Princess Meeka (KiKi Layne), Princess Omma (Bella Murphy) and Princess Tinashe (Akiley Love), are benign and loved rulers, but there are hiccups.
With no male heir to take his place, King Akeem is vulnerable to the whims of General Izzi (Wesley Snipes), leader of the nearby Nextdoria. When it appears that Akeem may have an heir from a one-night stand from his first trip to Queens, New York decades ago, the King and Semmi gas up the private jet and return to America.
There’s more plot and quite a few more laughs, but the story is so predictable, you’ve probably already figured where this story is going. It’s comfort food with a side of girl power, that plays like the first fish-out-of-water movie in reverse. Originally, a prince came to Queens to find a queen and self-awareness; now a prince comes to Zamunda to find a wife and himself.
Original screenwriters Barry W. Blaustein and David Sheffield along with “Black-ish” writer and producer Kenya Barris, give the people what they want, a blast of nostalgia that mostly does away with the dated sexism of the first film. There’s even some subtext about tradition vs. progress woven through the story, but let’s be real, you’re not dialling up “Coming 2 America” for the subtext. You’re here for the warm fuzzies. There’s something comforting about Murphy’s effortless way with a funny line, and while the movie isn’t exactly a knee slapper all the way through, it’s fun to see Eddie and Arsenio back in their royal robes.
Supporting work from Leslie Jones as Akeem’s loud and proud one-night-stand is laugh-out-loud-funny and Snipes, as the slightly unhinged Izzy, reaffirms that the comedic chemistry he and Murphy shared in “Dolemite Is My Name” wasn’t a fluke. Add to that a game of spot the actors reprising their roles and some new cameos—James Earl Jones! John Amos! Shari Headley! Rick Ross!—and you have peak pandemic, a movie that amiably passes the time until you can go to bed.
Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with news anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including “Gemini Man,” “Dolemite is My Name” and “Lucy in the Sky.”
Rudy Ray Moore may be the most influential entertainer who is not exactly a household name. The actor, comedian, musician, singer and film producer is best known under his stage name Dolemite, his motor-mouthed pimp persona from the 1975 film “Dolemite.” Featuring a mix of clumsy kung fu action, flashy clothes and sexually explicit dialogue and action, it has a well-earned a reputation as one of the best bad movies ever made.
No one will ever confuse the “Dolemite” movie or its sequels “The Human Tornado” and “The Return of Dolemite” with great art, but the character, vividly brought to life by Eddie Murphy in the new biopic “Dolemite is My Name,” was a trailblazer. His vocal delivery, a blend of braggadocio and raunchy rhymes, was a direct influence on hip hop pioneers like Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes and 2 Live Crew, setting the template for a generation of rappers.
The new film, directed by “Hustle and Flow’s” Craig Brewer, is the story of how Moore became Dolemite but it’s also about an outsider who created his own path to stardom. Like “The Disaster Artist” or “Ed Wood” it’s about the power of a person to make their dreams come true.
When we first meet Moore he’s assistant managing Dolphin’s of Hollywood one of the first African-American-owned record stores in Los Angeles by day and flopping as an MC in the clubs by night. He’s what they called an all-in-one-act. He sings, dances and tells corny jokes that start with lines like, “What did the Elephant say to the man?”
It isn’t until he finds inspiration in the tall tales told by Ricco (Ron Cephas Jones), a homeless man who hangs around the shop. “I ain’t no hobo,” he announces. “I am a repository of African-American folklore.” Ricco tells hilarious stories of “the baddest m*****rf***er who ever lived, Dolemite,” giving Moore just what he needs, an act like no one has ever seen before. Dolemite, complete with rhyming street poetry, wild 70s fashion and enough obscenity to make Lenny Bruce blush, is an instant hit. Audiences love it and soon Moore is making raunchy, self-produced records that hit the Billboard charts despite having to be sold under-the-counter because of their filthy covers and subject matter.
The inspiration to bring Dolemite to the big screen comes after Moore and friends take in a screening of Billy Wilder’s 1974 comedy “The Front Page.” The mostly white audience eats it up, yukking it up throughout while Rudy and his friends stare at the screen, stone faced. “That movie had no funny, no t**ties, and no Kung Fu,” he says. “The stuff people like us want to see.” He hires D’Urville Martin (Wesley Snipes) and playwright Jerry Jones (Keegan-Michael Key) and self-finances a movie about a pimp who takes revenge on the criminals and corrupt police officers who framed him. The result is a playful, over-the-top jumble of kung fu fighting, low rent action and sexy, sexy good times that becomes a word-of-mouth hit. “All my life I’ve wanted to be famous,” Rudy says, “but this is more important. This is about connecting with people.”
“Dolemite is My Name” is a simple, very sweet movie about a very raunchy man. An inspirational story of outsiders who find an on ramp into the show biz life nobody else would offer them, it’s the tale of an independent man who doesn’t see problems, only solutions.
Murphy plays Moore with plenty of heart. It’s a live wire performance that brings to life the indefatigable spirit of a guy who thought big. “I want the world to know I exist,” he says, not only for himself but for his under-represented community.
“Dolemite is My Name,” from its wild costumes by Oscar-winning designer Ruth E. Carter, to the fun performances from Murphy, Wesley Snipes, Chris Rock, Keegan-Michael Key, Snoop Dogg, Craig Robinson and Da’Vine Joy Randolph in supporting roles, to the music and the comedy to the evocation of the 1970s, is an entertaining and heartening story of a life lived large.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the latest action pic from Will Smith, “Gemini Man” and the bio-comedy “Dolemite is My Name” starring Eddie Murphy.
The Hobbit author J.R.R. Tolkien described dragon Smaug as “a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm.” The Flight of the Conchords have a song called Albi the Racist Dragon, and on Dragon Day at Cornell University, an effigy of one of the giant beasts is burned while students shout and dance.
They can be fiery, fearsome creatures. “Noble dragons don’t have friends,” writes Terry Pratchett in Guards! Guards! “The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.”
It’s not hard to understand why the folks on Game of Thrones are wary of Daenerys Targaryen’s (Emilia Clarke) brood of the beasts when she spouts off lines like, “When my dragons are grown, we will take back what was stolen from me and destroy those who wronged me! We will lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground!” Then there’s Bryagh, the serpentine villain of The Flight of Dragons who not only insults the movie’s heroes before dispatching them, he also gobbles up the eggs of other dragons!
Maybe if characters in movies paid more heed to the advice given by author Steven Brust — “Always speak politely to an enraged dragon” — then movies and TV wouldn’t have to offer up such a wide array of ways to rid the world of dragons. Look on IMDb, there are dozens of titles containing the phrase “dragon slayer.”
The 2010 animated hit How to Train Your Dragon begins in a remote Viking village where killing a dragon is “everything.” It focuses on Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), a kind- hearted boy who captures one of the flying behemoths and discovers two things: One, he can’t bring himself to kill it, and two, that dragons aren’t the fearful monsters everyone thinks they are. He becomes a Dragon Whisperer and the movie shows the serpentine creatures in a different light than the abysmal brutes usually seen on screen.
This weekend, How to Train Your Dragon 2 adds to the list of cinematic dragons who are more misunderstood than actually evil.
The 1941 Disney flick The Reluctant Dragon features a dragon that would rather recite poetry than cause havoc. “You’ve got to be mad to breathe fire,” he says, “but I’m not mad at anybody.”
In the live-action DragonHeart, a fire-breather must team with a dragon-slaying knight (Dennis Quaid) to end an evil king’s rule. When the giant serpent is accused of eating an adversary, he is indignant. “I merely chewed in self-defense, but I never swallowed.”
Eddie Murphy lent some comedic relief to the 1998 animated movie Mulan as the tiny, blue-horned Mushu. He may be the size of the Geico gecko, but don’t mention it. “I’m a dragon, not lizard. I don’t do that tongue thing.”
“The Whistler Film Festival was the first opportunity I got to sit in a room with strangers and have them watch the movie and I was very nervous going into it,” says comedian Brent Butt about his new film No Clue.
In the film he stars as Leo, a mild mannered Vancouver tchotchke salesman lured into a murder mystery by a femme fatale played by Amy Smart. “It’s a very dark, classic kind of detective mystery but the main characters say funny things,” says Butt.
“We really felt, totally objectively, that we made the movie we wanted to make but that part of my brain that is the stand up comic said, ‘What you think doesn’t really matter. The audience will let you know,’ and the audience is everything to me.
“Long before Corner Gas came around I was just a greasy nightclub comic, out there getting it done. When you are doing that you always have the ability to shift gears. You think, ‘They’re not buying the sports stuff so I’ll talk about politics,’ but with this movie if they’re not liking it five minutes in you can’t say, ‘Everybody go get a drink. I’m going to reedit this.’ You are locked in.”
Audience reaction was “better than we ever could have imagined” for a movie he calls a “tricky balancing act.”
“I wanted to make a movie that if it wasn’t funny would still be entertaining. It would still be thrilling and a mystery and have all those good, juicy elements and then the funny kind of folds in like gravy. It’s on top of everything else.
“From the writing stand point there were a lot of funny jokes I neglected to put in the movie because I felt this is funny but it is ultimately going to damage the reality. For this movie to work it has to feel real. One of the things we did early on was tell everybody to forget that this is a comedy. Pretend you are making a dark murder mystery. That’s what this is. The comedy will come in elsewhere.”
Butt cites a famous example of the kind of film he wanted to make.
“Beverly Hills Cop was written not to be a funny movie. It was written to be a thriller and then they cast Eddie Murphy and said, ‘Let’s make it funny.’ But if you take all the funny things that Eddie says out, it still holds water as an action movie.”
I find Eddie Murphy infuriating. It used to be that you could count on Eddie to raise a smile or two at the movies. I loved his silly giggle in Beverly Hills Cop, his version of Greatest Love of All in Coming to America, and the “My mother was like Clint Eastwood with a shoe…” routine from Delirious is one of the funniest monologues ever, but that was when Eddie and I were both much younger.
Now the prospect of a new Eddie Murphy movie is as welcome as a case of gingivitis. That makes me angry. He may be the biggest, most talented star in Hollywood who consistently makes the worst movies. Don’t get me wrong, nobody hits a home run every time but Murphy’s recent batting average is worse than most.
Meet Dave, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, The Haunted Mansion and Norbit are among the most annoying movies ever made. His latest, Imagine That, doesn’t plumb the depths of Pluto Nash or Norbit, but is only a slight improvement on his recent output.
Murphy is Evan, a high powered investment banker; a smart guy who makes deals all day long at work, but a terrible father who has no idea how to deal with his adorable daughter Olivia (Yara Shahidi) or ex wife Trish (Nicole Ari Parker). When a new employee at work with the unlikely name of Johnny White Feather (Thomas Haden Church) threatens his top dog status Evan turns to an unorthodox method of predicting the stock market—his daughter’s imaginary friends. With the aid of her security—or should that be securities—blanket he gets hot tips that get him noticed by the upper brass who are looking for someone to take over the company’s west coast division. Evan uses the time spent divining market fluctuations with his daughter and her imaginary friends to repair their broken relationship, but he’s still all business. That is until he realizes what’s really important in life.
Imagine That is a family fantasy movie that is more cute than actually funny. It’s also more predictable than funny. In fact, it’s a lot of things, but funny isn’t really one of them. There are a few laughs sprinkled throughout, but they are few and far between and Thomas Haden Church as the politically incorrect but rather amusing character White Feather gets most of them. He speaks in faux Native-American lingo, a mix of spiritual mumbo jumbo and tossed off lines like “the white fire grid you call the internet.” His early scenes are some of the film’s highlights.
Murphy hands in a solid performance as Evan, solid but not terribly interesting. He has a couple of funny moments and one very cute pancake making scene but there isn’t much going on here. He’s better than this and it’s disappointing to see him waste his talent on films that don’t require him to do much more than show up and cash a pay cheque.
Imagine That is forgettable family entertainment that’s better than Norbit and some other recent Murphy titles, but that isn’t saying much. It’s like being the sweetest lemon in the bushel; it still leaves a sour taste in your mouth.
Richard sits in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres, VOD and streaming services including Disney’s animated action flick “Raya and the Last Dragon” (Disney+ with Premier Access and theatres), the long awaited sequel “Coming 2 America” (Amazon Prime Video), the biopic “The United States Vs. Billie Holiday” (VOD), the legal drama “The Mauritanian” (premium digital and on-demand), the coming-of-age story “My Salinger Year” (VOD) and the look at the war on drugs “Crisis” (on digital and demand).
