it's hard to see a spike lee movie without bias, they're almost not even movies so much as they are cultural events. therefore it's always hard to pass judgement on them or review them like regular movies. there's nothing regular about spike lee, and predictably there is nothing ordinary about 'bamboozled', or perhaps there is and there lies the rub...
i can imagine that this film is going to be hardest on the film industry people. because unlike 'the player', 'bowfinger' or 'get shorty' it doesn't allow them to laugh at themselves. they are enemy, straight up. david edelstein, over at slate, has been the first critic (i suspect among many) who are going to fall into the spike lee trap. he criticises spike for not drawing out his characters into objects we can feel for, and ultimately be entertained by. if you want to be entertained by 'bamboozled' you essentially have to understand black humor, for everybody else, you'll never really know when or how to laugh. because it *is* a serious flick with a serious subject and the humor is all in the interstices, but not in the subtext. there are only a few ways to laugh at 'bamboozled' and if you don't get it, then its rough sledding.
even for me, busting a gut during the first half of the flick, it got pretty dry and heavy handed. spike has generally had a touch for giving his more dramatic lines a bit of tongue in cheek. but there is no famous 'spike shot' with people moving without walking. there are short soliloquies delivered with a kind of 'don't you get it?' attitude. if spikes characters are a bit flat, it's because they don't get it, and that serves the plot.
