"How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)" *** (out of four): Thoughtful, funny portrait of provocateur Melvin Van Peebles manages to be entertaining while keeping its subject thoroughly at arm’s length.

Early in “How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)”, director Joe Angio’s documentary of Melvin Van Peebles, one of the interviewees remarks, “In many ways, Melvin was an enigma.” If that was the sentiment on which Mr. Angio based his portrait of the artist then he succeeded with flying colors. “Watermelon” manages to be at once a thorough recounting of the startlingly full life of the man who is credited with fathering the blaxploitation genre, while at the same time shedding no light on who he was behind the scenes.

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