“I am the brand,” Damon Dash, founder and CEO of the hip-hop powerhouse Roc-A-Fella Enterprises, told the Guardian last year. “I wear it, drink it, listen to it, package it and sell it. I want to make money off any and everything concerning urban culture, because there is no one else who can tell the hip-hop story better than me.”

Apparently, the mogul also believes that no one can make fun of hip-hop better than he, either. “Death of a Dynasty,” a self-mocking comedy directed by Mr. Dash, takes aim, “This Is Spinal Tap”- style, at the excesses of mainstream rap culture. In theory, this is a good thing; most contemporary hip-hop artists could certainly benefit from taking themselves way less seriously.

But the joke is on Mr. Dash, who comes across as a power-drunk dilettante. And that isn’t only because the “Damon Dash” character spends most of the movie flapping his arms and shouting incoherently into a cell phone. In trying so desperately to lampoon his own lavish lifestyle, Mr. Dash only makes his egotism and hubris more obvious. Directing this movie is yet another way to prove that his money and power allow him to do anything he wants. It’s another way to strengthen the brand.

Over the past decade, Mr. Dash, his business partner Kareem “Biggs” Burke, and superstar rapper Shawn Carter (aka Jay-Z) have built the Roc into a multifaceted empire valued at more than $500 million. What began as a record label run out of the trunk of Mr. Dash’s car now counts the Rocawear clothing line, Armadale vodka, and Pro-Keds sneakers among its many interests.

Roc-A-Fella Records is no longer the company’s cornerstone. Late last year Mr. Dash and his partners sold their shares of the imprint to its parent company, Island Def Jam. Jay-Z, who announced his retirement from rapping in 2003, was named president and CEO of Def Jam Records.

“Death of a Dynasty” chronicles the rise and fall of journalist Dave Katz (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who is assigned a story on the inner workings of Roc-A-Fella and a developing feud between Mr. Dash (Capone) and Jay-Z (Robert Stapleton). Unfortunately, the film whizzes by at a dizzying speed, and some jokes are left hanging in dead air. Tired hip-hop cliches (nerdy white folks, desperate newcomers, gold-digging women) are trotted out over and over again. Anybody who has seen the 1990s gangsta parodies “CB4” and “Don’t Be a Menace” or 2001’s “Pootie Tang” will find Adam “Blue” Moreno’s script dull and tedious.

The plot is needlessly complex and ultimately less important than the layers of meta-narratives intended to make some sort of statement about how every celebrity’s persona is a construct – the public will never know the “real” story.

Or something like that; it’s difficult to tell what exactly the point is, what with all the plot twists and celebrity cameos. Chloe Sevigny, Lorraine Bracco, James Toback, Walt Frazier, and rappers Flavor Flav, Cam’ron, Master P, and Beanie Sigel are just a few of the movie’s many, many co-stars. They all look like they’re having the time of their lives, but it appears that “Death of a Dynasty” was far more fun to make than it is to watch.