God Save Queen Bee

I've been a Rudy Ray Moore fan for a while now, so I was looking forward to seeing Eddie Murphy's take, Dolemite is My Name (2019).

It shows how Moore was mostly washed up, working at a record store and MC'ing at a club. He had been a singer, a dancer, a comic, but now he was just barely making it. One day, he hears a bum (Ron Cephas Jones) spouting a Signifying Monkey rhyme about a bad cat called Dolemite, and gets an idea. He collects a few of these street rhymes, punches them up, dresses up like a pimp and recites at the club. It goes over great. So he decides to make a record.

He can't get anyone to back him, so he records it like a party record at his apartment. He can't sell to any record company, because it's too dirty, so he starts selling it out of his trunk. After everyone starts playing it all over LA, then the record companies start coming around.

Celebrating getting a contract, he takes his friends to see Billy Wilder's The Front Page. This might go over with the white folk, but he can't believe they made a movie this bad - no titties, no kung fu, nothing. So he decides to make his own movie. 

It's a good story - funny, big-hearted, about never giving up your dream. Also, about walking the line between sincere and stupid, or something. But I mainly want to direct your attention to one other character, Lady Reed, AKA Momma Queen Bee, played by Da'Vine Joy Randolph. When Moore is out on the chitlin circuit promoting his album, he sees her in the audience. When her boyfriend slaps her, she lays him out on the floor. After the show, Moore buys her a drink and tells her she should be on the stage, because she has something, like a spotlight that follows her around. Now, she is a large woman, not young or fair of face. But he's right, she does. She takes up with Moore, and not for sex - for business, show business.

And even though I didn't mention it in my review, I remembered Queen Bee from Dolemite. She did have something that made her stand out. Maybe not real Hollywood star power, but more than she needed for the movie. And I love that Murphy recognized that.