Bamboozled

Spike Lee’s shotgun attack on the treatment of blacks in television and the blurring of image and identity is a brilliant rant that digresses into repetitive sermonizing. Stuffed-shirt Pierre Delacroix (a stiff Damon Wayans) is a TV writer who creates a variety show so blatantly racist that he hopes to be fired and thus emancipated from his network contract. He then becomes a sort of pop-culture Dr. Frankenstein when Mantan the New Millennium Minstrel Show, which features blacks performing on a plantation in minstrel blackface, turns into a national hit. This audacious, scathing, flawed and frustrating look at race and race relations was shot on digital video with Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk's Savion Glover as Mantan and comedian Tommy Davidson as his sidekick Sleep ‘n’ Eat.