Disappoint, dull
“Blankman” is further proof Hollywood played the black superhero way too safely early on. Where Robert Townsend at least played it with sincerity in “Meteor Man”, Damon Wayans tries to spoof the superhero and only makes you wish his “In Living Color” character “Handyman” were the subject of this otherwise goofy, discouraging mess.
He plays Darryl, a four-eyed nerd who’s dreamed of being a superhero since both he and his brother Kevin (David Alan Grier) were kids, jerry-rigging a TV antenna above a toilet that needs to be flushed repeatedly in order to fix the reception and watch the old Adam West-Burt Ward Batman show.
Fast forward years later and Darryl has become an inventor of sorts, creating inventions like J-5, a robot made from a washing machine, out of old gadgets. He’s still a nerd who lives with grandma, which makes him all the more uncool to Kevin, working as a cameraman for a tabloid TV show but hoping to make the jump to real news.
But the streets need a hero. The city of Metro has been overrun with guns, gangs, and drugs and the mob (run by Jon Polito) is running out any politician who tries to overrule them. When someone close to him is shot, Daryll dons a bullet-proof supersuit of red long johns, a bed sheet cape, and skimpy utility belt to fight crime.
The supersuit’s first appearance is funny, as is one of the few moments of wit where Blankman, a black superhero of course, has to take the bus. I also liked a particular gadget known as the Speculum of Life. There are little moments of gadgetry and circumstance which produce some smiles but overall the whole thing is wanting.
Wayans plays it all wrong. Squeaky voiced and spastic, the obnoxious nerd wears thin far too quickly. Even in scenes of poignancy, Wayans mugs and embarasses himself. And at a certain point your superhero needs a certain level of decency, courage, and respect to work, not a goofy caricature of Urkel wearing an old hand-me-down uniform.
Directed by Mike Binder, he can’t make much out of Wayans’ lousy script. Here’s a movie that doesn’t seem to really know what it’s lampooning other than the cheeseball features of the Batman TV show and the movies, and even those have been done so much better that the jokes here barely register.
Otherwise Wayans is far too interested in piss and poop jokes in a childish attempt to create comedy out of nothing. He has nothing to say about the superhero genre and goes out of his way to avoid conflict, entanglements, or even much edge in every way, except for a boring subplot where he and Grier both like the same woman (Robin Givens).
The movie doesn’t so much develop into a third act so much as it limps into it, giving us a meaningless villain and Jason Alexander in a thanklessly unfunny role. “Blankman” doesn’t have much of a joke passed a geeky guy wearing his old pajamas and it shows. It’s flimsy, hollow, barely funny, and most dispiriting at all, features none of the Wayans’ family penchant for stirring up fearless, boundary pushing material. Instead, it comes closer to being just a blank slate.