Bamboozled

Spike Lee has made a name for himself aligning controversial issues with hard-hitting storylines and Bamboozled, a satire about a black writer in the white-dominated world of American network TV, is no exception. But in his lampooning of the television industry, Lee overreaches himself and this baffling film poses more questions than he can answer.

Damon Wayans is Pierre Delacroix, a Harvard educated screenwriter as mannered and bombastic as his name. Disillusioned with the business and given an ultimatum to create a hit show by his white ghetto-boy boss (Michael Rapaport), Delacroix pitches a concept so offensive he hopes it will get him fired. The idea: "Mantan, The New Millennium Minstrel Show," a spoof vaudevillian act featuring black-face minstrels, mammys, Uncle Toms and a house band called the Alabama Porch Monkeys. To Delacroix's horror, not only does the network love the show, Mantan is a runaway success with the audiences. So far, so satiric.

But Bamboozled descends into an incoherent and pontificating mess during unnecessarily extended sequences of the vaudeville show and a bizarre subplot involving a direct action vigilante rap group called the Mau Maus. As a dramatic narrative it fails on nearly every level, an effect exacerbated by Lee's decision to film on digital video, which emphasises the disjointed, uneven effect.

Damon Wayans doesn't help either. His ironic performance, all nasal voice and pontificating "Pray tell, Negro", soon grates. But one theory has it that Lee, a director not known for his communication skills with performers, deliberately gave Wayans no direction simply to watch him suffer. Why? Bamboozled is, to some extent, a parody of In Living Color, a variety comedy show in which Wayans starred and which Lee actively despised. Is Bamboozled Lee's revenge on Wayans for his earlier sins? If this is Lee's idea of a joke, he's the only one laughing.

Somewhere along the way - abandoning the camera for the soapbox - Lee loses the power to parody. Carried away with ramming the message home, he provides voice-over definitions of "satire" and "irony" (just to make sure his audience understands) and uses the Mau Maus as an inane example of those seeking revolution without any idea of what they're rebelling against.

It's not all bad. The mock advertisements for 'Da Bomb' alcohol and 'Tommy Hillnigger' jeans are a treat, even for audiences ignorant of Lee's own endless line of Nike adverts. All characters and corporations are equally culpable, Lee seems to be saying, and he's neither discriminating nor leaving himself out of the dock. Added to this, Delacroix's growing collection of collectable black curios as well as Lee's use of an extended montage of historical footage of black entertainers - however haphazardly edited together - have the power to speak for themselves.

In the final analysis, Lee's script leaves the motivations and political stance of his characters ambiguous at best: they all, at some point, betray their own ideology. This confusing and angry film only serves to remind us of the past without providing any options for the future. And from someone of Lee's capabilities and stature, I'm not sure that's good enough.

Reviewed by Monika Maurer