FILM REVIEWS: HUMOR & HUBRIS : ‘Hollywood Shuffle’: Pungent Wit, Wicked Satire

Consider the trained black actor in today’s Hollywood, auditioning desperately for the chance to read lines like “Why you be gotta pull a knife on me? I be got no weapon!”

Actor Robert Townsend, whose last showy role was as a fast-talking comic dude in “Ratboy,” did more than consider the incongruities of the situation. Turning director, producer and co-writer (with Keenen Ivory Wayans), he made them into a fast, satiric movie.

“Hollywood Shuffle” (selected theaters) is boisterous, out-at-the elbows movie making, an uneven series of skits, really, rather than a consistent whole. But there are wonderful comic moments here, alongside ones that droop from having gone on too long. And pervading the film is an unquenchable air--of optimism, even of community, which uses comedy to address some grievous inequities.

Townsend’s plot hangs on alter ego Bobby Taylor and that young actor’s struggles to get a role, anything better than his job at the hot-dog stand, Winky Dinky Dog, where the uniform caps have hot dogs protruding like pink horns.

He joins the lineup down the hall for that one, precious role, where inevitably black actors aren’t black enough , where they have to jive and swagger and genially debase themselves to fit some white casting director’s notion of what’s black. And while he’s waiting, Bobby’s mind takes off.

It’s in the embellishments that the movie really comes alive: Bobby’s daydreams, about acting schools in which white teachers give black actors lessons in how to really connect with roles of slaves, butlers and street hoods. About starring roles, in movies called “Rambro: First Young Blood.”

You’ve probably heard by now that when his original budget ran out, Townsend financed the rest of the cost of his $100,000 film with cash advances on credit cards spat out by some unwary computer. But budget is not the point of “Hollywood Shuffle”; it’s attitude.

Somehow, the humiliating limitations with which Hollywood has hogtied black actors have not eroded Townsend’s bedrock sweetness. As an actor-comedian-writer, he may be pungently funny or wickedly satiric. When he creates a TV show called “There’s a Bat in My House” (“Can a black bat from Detroit find happiness with a white middle-class family?”), with a small black actor starring as Batty Boy, Townsend is both.

The movie’s best sketch, “Sneakin’ in the Movies,” is an inspired parody of movie-review TV shows. Tyrone and Speed (Jimmy Woodard and Townsend, respectively) dissect movies like “Attack of the Street Pimps,” with ample clips. Townsend is broadly, affectionately profane (the movie’s R rating is for its language), but whether he wants it to or not, the essential Townsend shows through--a man of irrefutable sweetness.

This innate lovability--and his comic attack--was his great appeal in “Ratboy,” and it permeates Townsend’s own movie. There’s great warmth to his portrait of Bobby Taylor’s family, grandmother (Helen Martin), little brother Stevie (Craigus R. Johnson)who looks up to his actor-brother, and stalwart girlfriend Lydia (Anne-Marie Johnson). They are the film’s immensely sentimental side, but you feel how much Townsend invests in these characters.

They are also an antidote to the rage and self-disgust Bobby Taylor feels when he takes the only roles offered him--street pimps and hoods. Somehow, Townsend the film maker has come through the same experiences, his essential sense of the ridiculous intact, his spirit utterly undimmed. The great gusts of good humor in “Hollywood Shuffle” are the result.

It’s possible to quibble about its rough edges, its bare patches, even its oversimplification about the image of black people on the screen (his grandmother’s favorite complaint), but Townsend’s intrinsic nature defuses most of those complaints. He puts us all on his side and makes it a warmly funny place to be.

‘HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE’

A Samuel Goldwyn Co. release. Executive producer Carl Craig. Director, producer, Robert Townsend. Writers Townsend, Keenen Ivory Wayans. Camera Peter Deming. Editor W. O. Garrett. Art director Melba Katzman Farquhar. Sound William Shaffer. Music Patrice Rushen, Udi Harpaz . Special Effects Howard A. Anderson Co. With Robert Townsend, Anne-Marie Johnson, Starletta Dupois, Helen Martin, Craigus R. Johnson, Domenick Irrera, Paul Mooney, Lisa Mende, Robert Shafer, John Witherspoon, Ludie Washington, Keenen Ivory Wayans.

Running time: 1 hour, 22 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (persons under 17 must be accompanied by parent or adult guardian).