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Unlike so many Saturday Night Live spin-offs, the underrated Pootie Tang was built out of a TV skit -- from the defunct Chris Rock Show -- that deserved a fuller treatment. Mining the line between gibberish and jive -- and between hip-hop and hype -- Rock Show director Louis C.K. has written and directed a movie that aims for cult status and mostly earns it. Pootie (played by Lance Crouther) is a ghetto superstar par excellence -- corny-cool right down to his cheap tinted shades and wide-open short-sleeve shirts. And while he may look like a wannabe Commodore trying to get backstage at a Teena Marie-Rick James concert, he's really a superhero whose powers lie in a magic belt bequeathed to Pootie by his late father (one of many roles played by Rock). When he's not recording wordless hit songs, he's out doing public service announcements to keep the kids of America (by way of Brooklyn) sober, off drugs, and as far away from cheeseburgers and chicken as possible. His PSAs have driven a super-conglomerate's profits into the ground. Eventually the CEO (played by Robert Vaughn in a hilariously tragic dye job) dispatches his temptress (Jennifer Coolidge) to weaken Pootie so he can steal the belt and make Pootie do malt liquor ads. You get the picture: Pootie Tang mocks the place where hip-hop and blaxplotiation meet. As it turns out, the movie's low-budget sheen is its own best critique of the retro-fabulousness being laughed at. With the peerless Wanda Sykes (dressed as a middle-aged Lil' Kim) providing plenty of laughs, Pootie is hellbent on keepin' it surreal.

All Movie Guide

This comic spoof is spun off from a character that first appeared on The Chris Rock Show, and is written and directed by Louis C.K., one of that show's producers. Lance Crouther stars as Pootie Tang, a crime fighting superhero and recording artist who speaks in an unintelligible gibberish that seems to be a combination of Ebonics and street slang. Despite his communication problem, Pootie is a hero to children, whom he attempts to protect from the evil Dick Lecter (Robert Vaughn), a corporate fat cat out to corrupt America's youth with alcohol, tobacco, and junk food. Pootie also runs up against an artistic imitator (David Cross) and a sleazy recording executive (Andy Richter) Pootie Tang co-stars Chris Rock, Dave Attell, and Bob Costas and Conan O'Brien as themselves. Karl Williams

Village Voice

Poised somewhere between blaxploitation spoof and avant-garde freak-out, Pootie Tang qualifies as the weirdest, funniest studio release of the [2001] summer and a bona fide cult object in the making.... "Sipi-tai!" and "Wa-da-ta!" are his favorite interjections. It's one of the movie's central jokes that everyone somehow understands what he's saying.... [Louis] C.K. enlivens the proceedings with a befuddling array of alienation effects...and muscles through the threadbare patches by sheer force of surreal non sequitur. Dennis Lim

Product Details

• UPC: 032429065919
• Source: PARAMOUNT
• Time: 1:21:00

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Chris Rock Triple Feature