Jo Jo Dancer Your Life is Calling

Directed by Richard Pryor, Jo Jo Dancer Your Life is Calling follows Pryor’s title character as he thinks back on his life after severely burning himself while freebasing cocaine. First-time filmmaker Pryor delivers a predominantly tedious drama that’s made all-the-more interminable by a hopelessly uninvolving structure, as scripters Paul Mooney, Rocco Urbisci, and Pryor offer up an often aggressively familiar narrative that contains many of the beats and plot points one has come to associate with lazy biopics – with the decision to incorporate Jo Jo’s spirit into the proceedings only compounding the already-tiresome atmosphere. It doesn’t help, certainly, that Pryor has packed Jo Jo Dancer Your Life is Calling with a whole host of exceedingly lifeless set pieces, including an interminable bit wherein Jo Jo, dressed as a woman, performs an entire striptease routine, and there’s little doubt, as well, that the second-act emphasis on Jo Jo’s standup does little to alleviate the less-than-captivating vibe (ie it’s just not funny, for the most part). By the time the endless, eye-rollingly avant-garde final stretch rolls around, Jo Jo Dancer Your Life is Calling has unquestionably cemented its place as a fairly epic misfire that explains, quite definitively, why this remains Pryor’s only directorial effort.

* out of ****