In the spoof that bears his name, Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White) sports every outfit in the blaxploitation-look book. While investigating the murder of his junkie brother, he wears a cheap-looking suit with lapels that belong on a pterodactyl. He drops in on a warren of pimps in a leather trench coat, leather pants, and a turtleneck (all black). He does karate (with a certain elected official) in a sky-blue suit with BeDazzled trim. The clothes, all by the inspired costume designer Ruth E. Carter, look authentically 1970-something. And for its first 50 minutes, so does "Black Dynamite.'' It's as intentionally funny as "Shaft in Africa'' and "Dolemite'' are accidental comedies.
Tired, presumably, of playing a physical specimen (although not enough to keep his shirt on here), White wrote himself this part (along with Byron Minns and director UNC-CH grad Scott Sanders). And he puts a lot of comical melodramatic muscle behind the dialogue delivered by his Afro-ed martial-artist ex-CIA womanizer. When Black Dynamite - everyone urgently calls him by both names - hears that his brother is strung out, he turns mock-intense: "Where is he, and what has he had?''
White stuffs the screen legacies of Billy Dee Williams, Richard Roundtree, and Fred Williamson inside a pair of quotation marks. And yet the actor gives Black Dynamite enough of his own issues to stand as more than a mere impersonation of African-American machismo. The hilarious sight, for instance, of a room full of tiny heroin-addicted orphans slapping their arms for a vein causes a post-traumatic fit: "I was an orphan!" (So many actors in the film launch themselves over the top - Arsenio Hall, Tommy Davidson, Bokeem Woodbine, Kym Whitley - that Salli Richardson seems all the funnier for playing her part as the orphanage director straight.)
