Bamboozled

by MATTHEW BOND, Mail on Sunday

Recently I was praising Hollywood for at least having the courage to make big-budget movies about race, films such as Remember The Titans and Men Of Honour.

Now along comes Spike Lee with Bamboozled, a film that suggests I do not know what I am talking about.

Given that he is a black American filmmaker and I am a white, British critic, I am prepared to concede he may have a point - although I would tentatively add the rider that I was talking about film while Lee's primary target here is American television.

Bamboozled is certainly over-long, modestly derivative and eventually so complex that you need a degree in race relations to unravel its message. But it is beautifully made and profoundly thought-provoking. Just in case you are worrying, it is also very funny.

In structure, it resembles The Producers, where Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel deliberately set out to make the most unsuccessful musical ever, only to discover Springtime For Hitler is a monster hit.

Here, Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans), a black, Harvard-educated television producer, deliberately sets out to make a programme that will finally get his white, black-embracing studio boss ('brother man, I'm blacker than you') off his back.

Inevitably, the New Millennium Minstrel Show, set in a watermelon patch and featuring, as Delacroix describes them, 'two real coons' - Mantan and Sleep 'n' Eat - is a ratingsbusting success.

But is it a success because the audience recognises it as brilliant satire (it is written by an all-white writing team) or because it simply confirms the prejudices they secretly harbour?

Wayans (giving a performance strangely reminiscent of Chris Eubank) and Michael Rapaport, as his hypocritical boss, are both terrific, and Lee is on top form as a director.

A repetitive sequence which sees the black actors putting on their 'black faces' is haunting and powerful, and beautifully enhanced by Terence Blanchard's moody jazz sound-track. Bamboozled may not be a commercial film but it is a pretty good one.

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