Spike shuts off laughs

'Bamboozled' starts as satire but becomes a heavy-handed message movie.
Spike Lee continues his downward career trajectory with "Bamboozled," his intermittently brilliant but ultimately frustrating new film.
Damon Wayans plays Pierre Delacroix, a TV writer desperate to make his mark in the business. To that end, he pitches the idea of a prime-time minstrel show to his boss (Michael Rapaport) after being ordered to come up with a program that will become America's new #1 water-cooler conversation topic.
"Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show" is an immediate hit, making stars out of Manray (Savion Glover) and Womack (Tommy Davidson), two homeless street performers. Unfortunately, Delacroix's overnight success doesn't sit well with him, and his misgivings bring about his eventual downfall. Acting as his conscience is personal assistant, Sloan (Jada Pinkett-Smith), whose life is further complicated when she falls in love with Manray.
The first half of the film works as an outrageous satire in the tradition of Paddy Chayefsky's "Network." Lee's targets (network TV executives; ambitious buppies like Delacroix; the lengths to which blacks will humiliate themselves to get a break in the entertainment industry) are pretty much sitting ducks, but the pace is so snappy and his wit so razor-sharp you hardly notice.
Change in tone: Alas, "Bamboozled" switches gears midway and becomes a labored, heavy-handed "message movie" rife with cheesy, badly integrated melodrama. And once we stop laughing (which Lee practically orders us to do by the jarring change in tone), it's easy to start picking the movie apart.
A minstrel show? Even as metaphor, the idea that America would embrace something as offensive and archaic in the 21st century is inconceivable. Why not pick a more identifiable subject for black rage? Gangsta rap videos and inane sitcoms starring black performers are modern-day minstrel shows, and we wouldn't need a leap of faith to believe they could be successful; they already are.