Black Dynamite: More Than Okay, Less Than Cosmic

First, the praise: There is nothing wrong
with Scott Sanders’s Black Dynamite. You will enjoy the
kung-fu fighting; you will laugh at the many references to the main
themes of the blaxploitation tradition; you will not be disappointed by
its crazy ending. The editor, Shawn Maurer, knows the logic of funky
sequencing. The director, Scott Sanders, has a great
sense of comic timing. Michael Jai White, the star of the film and also
one of the script’s authors, has complete control of his macho (or “mac
ho”) character.

Next, the criticism: What is right with Black Dynamite also
happens to be what is wrong with it. Meaning, all you can give this
movie is praise—praise for the editing of its action sequences,
for its competent acting, for the director’s knowledge of the
blaxploitation tradition, and for its groovy score. The film begins
with a quest for praise and ends by finding lots of it. But what one
wants from a movie of this kind, a movie about a type or period of
cinema, is for it to cross the border of being merely entertaining
(order) to being a work of genius (disorder). This I think is the
hidden or even silent failure of Black Dynamite—it is a
comedy that never reaches the strange regions of the cosmic.

A final thought: Think of Pootie Tang. That film, which has
much in common with Black Dynamite (both deconstruct popular
images of black masculinity), can hardly be called a comedy. It is a
work that defeats any effort to name or classify it. Pootie
Tang is pure genius. Because Black Dynamite is easily
(indeed instantly) classifiable—it’s a good comedy—it does
not capture our amazement but only our praise.