8 Mile
Yo! I went to see 8 Mile today, aiit?
So on the walk there I saw this really long line of people waiting on line to climb down into a manhole right in the middle of Atlantic Avenue. I thought that was kind of ...weird. I asked someone what was up and apparently there was some kind of photography show down under the street in a tunnel. Seemed kind of cool. $10. But forget it with the stupid line to climb down into a sewer.
So couple things before the movie started. First off they showed a coke commercial pre-previews with these NASCAR guys sitting around watching a movie but the film ran all wrong and they were upsidedown and the sound ran backwards and everything. It was cool. Made me want a Pepsi. Then I saw a preview for Daredevil which I was sort of psyched for but the preview was lame and totally lacking a kickass moneyshot. Looked garbagey.
Anyway, this 8 Mile film is good but it is far from a 'great' movie. I'm a fan of Eminem. Not a big enough fan of his music to buy it but big enough to burn it- if you know what I'm saying. You all know the story of this movie so I don't think I need to get into it. Rocky with a mic basically. The movie gave a really good image of hip hop and hard Detroit. Blah blah. Rapper contests. Yadda yadda Work in a bad factory job. Yimminy yimminy. Mom has a bad boyfriend. Kachoonana kachoonana. Eminem pushes through all of that chase after his dream. And all that and all that.
Eminem can definitely act. Even though he was in every scene it was only once in a while that I noticed him 'acting'. For the most part it was a natural performance and impressive. Mehki Phifer played his like best friend type. He was good. The 'love interest' was played by that chick from Clueless and she was ok but annoying. There was no real connection there and she was just a straight opportunist so you didn't care about her. And Kim Basinger played his trailer park mom. She was a unglammed glammy miscast. Bad call.
When push came to shove the movie didn't get me as pumped as I would have liked and the impact scenes seemed watered down. It completely played by the flashdance rules of the formula. There were no surprises in this movie at all. No real twists (at least any that you cared about.) You got your tough home life. You got your friends (including the goofy one). You got your rivals. And you got your Eminem. The story played out and all the pieces fit together. It was entertaining even if it never kicked into overdrive.
Three Good Things About this Movie
- Eminem is the best rapper out there and it's cool to see how he 'evolved'.
- The closing scene showdown thing is cool.
- The message of going after what you want and overcoming hurdles always
works on me.
Three Bad Things About this Movie
- Watching Eminem get confidence with his rapping style unfortunately left us
without him rapping really well till the very end.
- When you walk out of a movie like Rocky you feel like punching someone in the face for
like two days. When I walked out of this I sort of strutted a bit but that wore
off by the time I got through the lobby.
- The bad guys were all cliched up karate kid style.
All in all it's a good movie but I didn't see why people are going so nuts for it. This movie has been done before 1000x. But considering it was Eminem I expected to see something with more bite and controversy. Instead I found that he's clicked nicely into the Hollywood system... not that there's anything 'wrong' with that.