Good film of its kind, but not up to Curtis Hanson standards

Rating: Null/10 (11 November 2002)

**Some Spoilers**
Eminem's 8 Mile movie did $54.5 million its first weekend. It was a pretty fair movie, but it wasn't great. Eminem has about one face- a defiant, fierce look- to display to the camera. The director is Curtis Hanson, who gave us the extraordinary LA Confidential and the not so extraordinary Wonder Boys with Michael Douglas. Kim Basinger plays Rabbit's trailer trash Mom, who is divorced, of course, and going out with a guy only 2 years older than Eminem's 20 year old character Jimmy. At one point Eminem is talking with his Mom and she blurts out something about how her boyfriend won't do something with her sexually. Rabbitt pushes her away and shouts "Mom, I can't discuss that with you." Basinger got an Oscar for Best Actress in LA Confidential but she won't get one here. This is a better movie than you would expect from a rock star but its still not first rate.
There are a lot of black people in support of the Eminem character. The setting is ghetto Detroit. Rabbit hangs around with black guys and has learned to rap with the best of them. But he's afraid to go head-to-head in a Rap contest at a local nightclub, even though his good friend is announcer and MC of the contest. Sorting people into heroes and villians is a bit of a trick for the storytellers. In the end, Rabbit is the good guy and a group of rival blacks are the bad guys. If Rabbit hadn't had his own group of more loveable blacks (to the audience) backing him, this politically incorrect maneuver couldn't have been pulled off. Toward the end, when Basinger's boyfriend has ditched her and she has received an eviction notice, she wins $3,400 at a Bingo parlor and so the trailer is saved.
With that kind of encouragement, Rabbit summons the chutzpah and poetry to compete in the rap contest and shrewdly beat the black contestants who three scenes earlier had beaten him up pretty badly. Among the character actors supporting Eminem are a white Michael J. Pollard lookalike and a pretty funny and large Forrest Whitaker clone. Everyone has seen a variation on this story before, but with Eminem in it, there is apparently all the difference in the world.
There's a minor trend in this movie and another with Adam Sandler. The good directors like Hanson have thrown in the towel trying to get quality scripts and have just decided to compromise their highbrow film esthetic with pop culture. Paul-Thomas Anderson of Boogie Nights and Magnolias fame has made a minor art movie with Sandler in the lead, pulling the same routine as Hanson does with Eminem. So, the actor isn't so hot! No problem. Find out what the actor can manage, actingwise, then select a simple enough story so the actor can play the role. The new Sandler film is called Punch Drunk Love. I'll probably go have a look see. It will be the first Adam Sandler I've ever looked at, since this guy's comedies are unbearably dumb and unfunny. Emily Watson and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, extraordinary character actors, are there to back up Sandler. The movie might even be good.