DOLEMITE IS MY NAME & DAYBREAK

Dolemite Is My Name is a comedy bio-pic directed by Craig Brewer (who made the great Hustle & Flow , which still remains the most awkward Best Song winner ever at the Academy Awards with ‘It’s Hard Out There for a Pimp’ being performed before an audience of old, confused white people). 

In 1970s Los Angeles, Rudy Ray Moore (Eddie Murphy) is working in a record store, trying to get his music on the air on the local radio station, which is housed IN the record store but runs into a disagreeable DJ played by Snoop Dogg.  At night, Rudy Ray moonlights as an MC for Ben Taylor (Craig Robinson) and his musical group at a club. He asks the owner of the club for some time doing comedy, but he’s turned down. Moore self-produces and markets a comedy album and he becomes quite successful within the African American community. Off the success of this, Moore decides to make a film based off his stage character called Dolemite is My Name. It’s the free wheelin’, short-cutting style of filmmaking that is deployed which makes for much of the humour here – if you like Bowfinger, Living in Oblivion or Ed Wood or any film about a filmmaker with big dreams and a lot of vision but not really the talent to pull it off, there’s a sweetness and a sincerity to that that’s really appealing and this film has it in bucket-loads.

Daybreak follows the story of 17-year-old Canadian high school outcast Josh Wheeler (Colin Ford) searching for his missing British ex-girlfriend Sam Dean (Sophie Simnett) in post-apocalyptic Glendale, California. Joined by a ragtag group of misfits including 10 year old pyromaniac Angelica and Josh’s former high school bully Wesley, now turned pacifist samurai. Josh tries to stay alive amongst the horde of Mad Max-style gangs (evil jocks, cheerleaders turned Amazon warriors), zombified adults called Ghoulies. Matthew Broderick also stars in flashbacks as their High School Principal.