UNDERCOVER BROTHER: Comedy. Starring Eddie Griffin, David Chappelle, Chris Kattan and Denise Richards. Directed by Malcolm D. Lee. (PG-13. 90 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

"Undercover Brother" is the sort of comedy that lacks comic invention but makes up for it with comic fecundity. Don't like this joke? Here comes another,

and another. The picture is crammed with shameless satire, engaging moments of pure silliness and jokes that border on the outrageous. It combines relentless energy with an aura of good nature for a formula that works.

Based on the Internet cartoon series, the movie is the story of Undercover Brother, a modern-day Robin Hood with an affection for the 1970s. He wears elephant bells, platform shoes and silk shirts with floral designs. He wears the sort of thin leather jacket that nobody ever but-

tons, has his hair done in an Afro and drives around in an early '70s Coupe de Ville, with Average White Band blasting out of his eight-track player. Decked out in this way, Eddie Griffin gets a laugh just by showing up.

"Undercover Brother" could be considered a blaxploitation version of "Austin Powers," but with a difference. Austin Powers had an excuse for being a '60s throwback -- he'd been cryogenically frozen for 30 years. That detail not only explained his retro ways but also grounded the character. The audience understood that it was really seeing a '60s man.

It says something that "Undercover Brother" doesn't even go as deep as "Austin Powers." Undercover Brother derives his style from the blaxploitation films of the early '70s, but the movie never explains how such a fellow could come to exist. Nor does it milk much comedy from the ways Undercover Brother clashes with his environment. He is just a flamboyant fellow in a cartoon universe.

In '70s movies, heroes like Shaft often found themselves fighting "the Man. " In "Undercover Brother," the title character finds himself fighting him literally. The Man is an actual person, a powerful white man whose mission is to keep the black man down and eradicate all vestiges of African American culture. In opposition to his plan is an organization called the "B.R.O.T.H.E.


H.O.O.D.," which recruits Undercover Brother to stop the Man.

Billy Dee Williams has a funny featured role as a retired general, who is clearly based on Colin Powell. The General is about to toss his hat into the presidential race, but the Man -- through his minion, Mr. Feather (Chris Kattan) -- gets to him first with a mind-altering drug. As a result, the General goes before a throng of reporters and announces that he is opening a "chain of fried chicken restaurants." If you buy a bucket, you get "32 ounces of malt liquor free."

Griffin is a physically fluid and adaptive comedian. Some of his best work comes when U.B. goes undercover as a buttoned-down white-collar worker who is seduced by the Man's secret weapon, the White She-Devil, played by Denise Richards. She's described as "black man's kryptonite." Actually, just "kryptonite" would about say it.

Funny as Griffin is, he's topped by David Chappelle as Conspiracy Brother, a paranoid who insists that Babe Ruth was black and that "George Washington Carver made the first computer from a peanut." But even he can't quite convince himself that O.J. didn't do it.

Advisory: This film contains violence.