Black Dynamite Follow-Up Outlaw Johnny Black Doesn’t Give You “Oooooo”
Those expecting Michael Jai White’s Outlaw Johnny Black to be a spur-jangling Black Dynamite should recalibrate their expectations. Frankly, Outlaw Johnny Black is an apprehensive comedy with an identity crisis. Throughout the indulgent two-hour-plus duration, White and co-star/co-producer/co-writer Byron Minns bounce between lighthearted goofball shticks and straightforward gunslinger storytelling that forgets its comedic roots. There’s no sustained level of silliness, which makes pops of exaggerated physical humor feel out of place—worse when stunt casting and flat observational jokes are met with crickets. Somewhere between The Harder They Fall and Blazing Saddles sits Outlaw Johnny Black, which seems happy enough to exist (given its tumultuous path to screen), but struggles to do so with crackshot precision.
White trades furious roundhouse kicks for deadeye marksmanship as Johnny Black, positioned as a Blaxploitation hero in the Wild West. He’s a renegade hellbent on vengeance against Brett Clayton (Chris Browning) for killing his preacher daddy, but plans go on hold when Johnny ends up in Hope Springs impersonating Reverend Percy (Byron Minns). Johnny only wants to maintain the charade of sermons and blessings until the town’s bank reopens and he can skedaddle with the church’s savings, but trouble in Hope Springs might rewire the hardened outlaw’s moral code. The good people of Hope Springs don’t deserve to have their homes stolen by greedy land baron Tom Sheally (Barry Bostwick), whom Johnny places in his crosshairs.
You can tell how often White sought inspiration from Blazing Saddles (e.g., direct recreations, like Mongo K.O.’ing a horse), which reads like Keenen Ivory Wayans doing Mel Brooks. Sometimes Outlaw Johnny Black’s satirization is exceptional, on par with I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, and other times, it’s misfiring as limply as Little Man. None of the Native American scenes featuring comedians like Russell Peters and Paul Rodriguez dressed as Indigenous peoples express their comedic intentions very well, which feel like workshopped sight gags still in their infancy. Observational and history-driven roasts about racism and colonization aren’t as zippy or laugh-out-loud noteworthy as in Black Dynamite, playing safe in what could’ve been a gunsmoke-heavy exploitation hootenanny.
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