Oy, Yo Mama

Blaxploitation movies are both saluted and bitten in The Hebrew Hammer, a satire that applies the conventions of '70s black stud detective movies like Shaft, Hammer, Slaughter, Truck Turner to contemporary Jewish American culture. It begins with a flashback to the title character's childhood in which little Mordecai is teased by his non-Jewish schoolmates because the spinning-top dreidel he got as a Hanukkah present doesn't match up with their own, plentiful Christmas gifts. As an adult, Mordecai Jefferson Carver (played by Adam Goldberg) becomes a hipster, righteous defender of bullied Jewish kids while also making a career as a private eye. (He's called "a certified circumcised dick" to a tune that resembles Isaac Hayes' "Theme from Shaft.")

Jonathan Hesselman wrote and directed The Hebrew Hammer with a fan's knowledge of the Blaxploitation genre and with a frank and sometimes-funny tone of commiseration. Many of the film's jokes convey Hesselman's awareness of the need for aggression and revenge -- the need for heroes -- that made Blaxploitation movies such a draw for urban youth. What makes the film noteworthy is that Hesselman's comic perspective on ethnic identity spreads the need for role models and saviors across American's ethnic rainbow.

The analogy made here between black movie fantasy and white Jewish movie fantasy is sometimes awkward. Underneath Hesselman's jokes lay the social complexities of pop culture. A heady confusion is felt while watching Mordecai drive a pimpmobile Caddy, or strut around in a black suit and a rabbinical black fedora. It recalls Rick Rubin's 1987 Tougher Than Leather (the first Hip Hop dramedy) which revealed that Run-DMC had good-naturedly appropriated that fedora for the group's own stylish iconography: Run-DMC's black New Yorkers' attitude combined with Rubin's own Jewish New Yorker's effrontery. Hesselman's addition to this history is to stick a big, flouncing, pimptastic feather in the hat's band. Call it Mack-aroni cuz this cultural mish-mash is as all-American as Yankee Doodle. Both Tougher Than Leather and Rusty Cundieff's Fear of a Black Hat are better films than The Hebrew Hammer because they actually examined and exposed some of the political economy behind black pop culture. Hesselman, working in the Tarantino era, settles for facile identification with the imagery and routines of black pop without inquiring how they're made or sold. He's shy of showing actual black and Jewish professional/cultural alliance such as distinguished James Toback's provocative Black and White (especially the recording studio sequences where the white studio owner will only deal with black rappers when their Jewish lawyer intervenes).

The Hebrew Hammer offers a milder provocation, centered on an interesting, historical- minded joke: When Mordecai is enlisted to fight the racist son of Santa Claus, he runs into the writer-director-producer-star of Sweet Sweetback's Baad Assss Song, Melvin Van Peebles. The man who started Blaxploitation by giving it its political backbone, greets Mordecai by saying "Goddam brother, you kickin' ass!" Mordecai returns the compliment, "Just taking a page out of Sweetback's book." Then Van Peebles himself paraphrases the blues-theme from Sweetback, "Mmmm Hmmm/ They bled yo mama/ They bled yo papa/ But they won't bleed you!"

Van Peebles' genius insight that movies can be an ideological weapon against bigotry is part of the lesson that whites and Jews take from the advances of black pop culture. Hesselman knows that imitating black style isn't simply about being cool (which finally puts him ahead of Tarantino). That's why The Hebrew Hammer subtly strikes a blow for the feelings of frustration and resentment that Jews have about living in a majority Christian society. These are the movie's lamest jokes (skits about school boy Mordecai and about Santa's evil son Damian -- played by comedian Andy Dick -- are more contrived than credible). It is Adam Goldberg's performance -- his chutzpah -- that gives Hesselman's satire the extra conviction it needs to move past these weak points.