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The Bitter Kitten Movie Club: DOLEMITE IS MY NAME (2019)

Posted on May 15, 2026

Dolemite is My Name (2019)
Director: Craig Brewer
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Mike Epps, Craig Robinson, Titus Burgess, Keegan Michael Key, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Wesley Snipes, Chris Rock, Snoop Dog, Kodi Smit-McPhee

We can’t imagine there’s any way to quantify this, but we still feel confident in proclaiming that Dolemite is My Name is the ultimate feel-good movie with the highest number of “motherfuckers” in the script. It’s a word Eddie Murphy practically built his entire brand on, and the movie makes excellent and hilarious use of his ability to spew rapid-fire motherfuckers at every chance; just one of several dozen different ways that make this film feel like the perfect Eddie Murphy star vehicle. It seems a cliche to suggest that he was born to play Rudy Ray Moore, the all-around entertainer who built the Dolemite character from the ground up, but the script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski and the direction by Craig Brewer certainly do everything possible to make you believe that. This is a legend paying homage to a legend. It’s also very clearly a longtime dream of the star, which you can see when talking about Moore to Colbert:

And one of the few things that’s disappointing about this film is that it didn’t shower Murphy with the awards recognition he deserved — not because of his facility with profanity and a good pussy joke, but because he does such a heartbreakingly good job of depicting Moore’s hidden disappointments and just-under-the-surface desperation to make something of himself before it’s all over. Still, it’s one thing to say that Eddie Murphy did some of the best work of his career in Dolemite is My Name, but the truth is, everybody involved in the film was on their A game, giving it everything, with joy and true affection. The choices Wesley Snipes makes are hilarious and hypnotic. You can’t take your eyes off him, largely because you can’t wait to see what weird little gesture or flourish he’s going to do next. Da’Vine Joy Randolph makes you fall in love with her. Craig Robinson, Titus Burgess and Keegan-Michael Key are all hilarious. This is one of those truly joyous film-watching experiences where every song, every costume, every scene, gives you something to enjoy, to appreciate, or to laugh at. It’s as old school as feel-good entertainment biopics get, and if you want to get critical about it, it’s pretty much loaded with biopic cliches from start to finish, but Murphy and the rest of the cast and creators give you every reason to watch and to cheer them on.

Costume designer Ruth E. Carter rightly gets a lot of praise for her work in such legendary or high-profile fare as Coming to America, Black Panther, and Sinners, but we honestly feel like Dolemite is My Name represents her very best work. What classifies her approach to costume design is that she starts from a place of real love and respect for the characters she’s helping to create. Even in BAPS, where the point of the costumes was to define how tacky the main characters were, she gave them iconic looks that were less about making fun of the characters and more about explaining them. We were honestly shocked to discover that she sourced vintage polyester for a lot of Rudy’s suits, because the made them all look like the richest haute couture money could buy.

That’s of a piece with the film’s whole approach to telling Rudy’s story, elevating him to mythic community storyteller and casting his successes as perhaps a bit grander than they may have been. Every one of the outfits Carter creates for Rudy and his increasingly successful entourage is accurate to the styles of that time and place, but so impeccably rendered that elevates all of the characters to a more iconic status. The effect is one of immense dignity bestowed on the characters. These may have been pimpwear styles, but she was going to make sure they all looked amazing onscreen. There’s literally not one costume in the film that gives the sense that we’re supposed to laugh at it for being silly or too much. It all feels correct and respectful.

While it feels likely – and even appropriate – that the story being told here is creating something of a myth around the real person, if Dolemite is My Name tends to overstate Moore’s financial successes, it does such a wonderful job of explaining his less obvious ones, from codifying African-American oral storytelling traditions and paving the way for the rise of rap, but also in showing how much value there is in serving your community with entertainment and good times. The best scenes in the film are the house parties and small clubs or the scenes where Rudy slowly turns the tall tales of the old unhoused men in his neighborhood into crowd-pleasing comedy bits. The film is a celebration of Black culture and social life in so many ways, but it’s also a salute and appreciate of artistry itself; of the people who make the moments that make their own people laugh and clap and shout back in appreciation.

We couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something very queer about that kind of story, how it mirrored things like the rise of drag balls and lip syncing in LGBTQ culture. We were a bit shocked to discover that Moore is largely considered to have been a closeted if flamboyant queer man and we wrestled with whether Murphy and the filmmakers did his story a disservice by leaving that part of out. We unpack this question in todays BKMC podcast, but there’s a big part of us that doesn’t particularly care if the film is accurate to the real story. In the end, Dolemite is My Name is a rapturous celebration of storytelling itself, and how it can bind and even create a community.

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