Spoof, homage to blaxploitation

Move over, Shaft. Make room, Superfly. Black Dynamite is comin' to clean up the mess in the 'hood.

And mess with your mind while he's at it.

A seriously funny send-up of '70s blaxploitation pictures, Michael Jai White and Scott Sanders' Black Dynamite is a multilayered spoof, but also an affectionate homage - and condensed cinema studies course - paying baadasssss tribute to a genre rife with pimps, pushers, foxy ladies, customized Cadillacs, and sky-blue sharkskin suits.

For folks steeped in the oeuvre of superstud heroes and ghetto gang wars, who know their Truck Turners from their Trouble Mans, Black Dynamite offers a wall-to-wall tribute to characters, dialogue, stunts, scenarios, and gloriously cheesy effects from a decade's worth of low-budget Afrocentric B's.

But the genius of Black Dynamite is that it's possible to appreciate this comic salutation even if you're totally unschooled in blaxploitation fare. Great comedy knows no ethnic boundaries, and truly, there is great comedy here - from a brilliant verbal-Rube Goldberg volley (it's a solve-the-mystery revelation scene) to the blatant and hilarious sampling of stock footage from vintage low-rent action pics.

Cowriter White, wearing a big Afro and a big mustache - and wielding a big Magnum .44 - stars in the title role as a kung fu-ing ex-CIA ladykiller who takes time out from lovin' when his brother Jimmy is whacked by drug dealers. They're pushing dope to kids in an orphanage, and they're tied to The Man, and there's strange stuff going on with a new brand of malt liquor, but the wild plot doesn't stop there - in fact, it doesn't stop until it gets all the way to the White House, where Richard Nixon has cooked up a conspiracy that makes Watergate look like nursery school.

Absurd and inspired, Black Dynamite is far more successful at tipping its hat to a bygone genre than Quentin Tarantino's hyped-up 2008 Grindhouse double bill. Tarantino was taking himself too seriously; White and Sanders take themselves into a land of schlocky sound effects and gratuitous female nudity, and have a blast.

Contact movie critic Steven Rea

at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com.

Read his blog, "On Movies

Online," at http://www.philly.com/

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