Movie Review- Black Dynamite

Black Dynamite is a rare genre of movie, the send-up/self-parody; other films in the genre being "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" and "Mars Attacks!".  The point of these movies is to simultaneously pay tribute to and poke fun at movie genres, without ever getting too silly. The genres in question here are blaxploitation flicks and  crummy police movies (think "Mitchell") of the 1970's. This movie pulls off the parody almost perfectly.

The movie centers around Black Dynamite, an all-the-time macho guy. In typical cop movie fashion, his brother is killed by drug dealers, so Dynamite starts a war on drugs, so he can avenge his brother's death. The plot gets really loopy and nonsensical from there, as most movies like that tend to do. The storyline is intentionally campy, though, and it's quite funny. The dialog in particular is really amusing, ranging from jilted-sounding exposition, to the constant use of "Can you dig it?". The parody is dead-on, from beginning to end, down to the cheesy cinematography and overuse of sweeps and fades. The action scenes are over-the-top ridiculous, and the sound effects are laughably terrible, too. There's even a touch of sepia-tone to some of the interior shots, as is often found in old grindhouse movies.

While this is a very funny movie, there are times when it seems like the writers couldn't pass up an opportunity for a joke, and they come across as out of place comparison to the sense of humor of the rest of the film. There's a scene where Dynamite and his friends figure out what the motive behind the drug dealers was, ("Who makes M&M's? Mars! And what's Mars spelled backwards without the S?...) and while it's very humorous, it doesn't quite fit with the semi-serious tone of the movie. I say semi-serious, because the film almost never acknowledges the ridiculousness of itself, but instead acts like it's a serious action movie. When the movie does start to somewhat acknowledge itself, it definitely shows; the end fight scene between Black Dynamite and Richard Nixon seems almost like a knowing wink to the viewers. I'm not opposed to it, though, it works really well and is really funny; it's just that script-wise, it seems out of place.

Overall, this is a very, very funny movie, and good-quality one, too. Highly recommended.

Quality: 4/5

Enjoyment: 5/5

IMDB Page- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190536/