By DONALD PORTERStandard-Examiner staff
Sometimes filmmakers get it so right, even when they get it wrong.
That’s the case with “A Low Down Dirty Shame,” the new “Shaft” spoof by writer-director Keenen Ivory Wayans (“I’m Gonna Git You Sucka”). It’s a low-down dirty shame that such a talented man -- he created the irreverent Fox TV sketch-comedy series “In Living Color,” too -- has made such an awful mess.
“A Low Down Dirty Shame” is truth in advertising: Sexist, homophobic and derivative of so many better action films, “Low Down” is disappointing at the outset and goes downhill from there.
Wayans takes the structure of a conventional detective movie, then dresses it up in fancy, allegedly hip clothing. It doesn’t work.
Wayans stars as Andre Shame, a former cop who was tossed off the force in the wake of a botched drug bust. Now Shame works the streets of L.A. as a lowly private eye -- poor but honorable, at least in his own eyes.