Other Titles • Hollywood Shuffle • Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle (1987)
Synopses for Hollywood Shuffle (1987)
1.
The alumni of Hollywood Shuffle are spread across dozens of current comedies and TV sitcoms--this is the movie that introduced Robert Townsend and the Wayans Brothers to the world. Townsend plays a young actor who struggles with being offered stereotyped street hustler roles while trying to maintain his self-respect and the approval of his family. Between scenes of comically humiliating auditions, Bobby has satirical fantasies about the plight of black actors, including the classic "Black Acting School" sketch, in which white teachers demonstrate jive talk and street moves for the befuddled black students. Townsend has a charming, low-key comic style, one considerably more subtle than that of some of the black comics who have risen to success with supposedly self-aware renditions of the stereotypes Townsend mocks. Townsend made this movie on his credit cards and it is clearly a heartfelt labor of love. --Bret Fetzer
(15 votes)
2.
The best example of urban guerilla filmmaking is ironically - and happily - also one of Hollywood's most triumphant success stories. Actor Robert Townsend (I'm Gonna Git You Sucka!), decrying the lack of good roles for black actors, puts his money where his mouth is and co-scripts (with Keenen Ivory Wayans), directs and stars in this "exuberant, tirelessly energetic, funny, appealingly mean-spirited and easy-to-life" comedy (Janet Maslin, The New York Times) that took Tinseltown by storm!
Actor wannabe Bobby Taylor (Townsend) dreams of landing a role…any role. But in a town where the best black roles are usually jive-talkin' gangsta stereotypes, Bobby learns that you have to make your own parts - even if they're just in your head. Spoofing everything from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and Eddie Murphy to Siskel & Ebert, Bobby's vivid imagination - and Hollywood Shuffle - are "an exhilarating blast" (New York)!
(15 votes)
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