Undercover Brother

Eddie Griffin plays Undercover Brother, a too-cool agent working for the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D, a top-secret agency working to preserve African-American culture from a shadowy super-villain known only as The Man. The present assignment: to save presidential hopeful Billy Dee Williams from being sidetracked into opening a chain of fried chicken restaurants. Think of it as a sort of black Austin Powers movie, only funnier, with nostalgic echoes of Shaft, Super Fly and Foxy Brown and a great funky soundtrack. Griffin has fun with the clothes, the giant ’Fro, and the ’tude, but most of the laughs go to Dave Chappelle as the paranoid Conspiracy Brother (“Did you know George Washington Carver built the first computer out of a peanut?”). Malcolm D. Lee (Spike’s cousin) directs with gusto.