Cute girls like that don't like dangerous boys like that.

Rating: 4/10 (6 April 2005)

I spent my early childhood in the hood, moved to upper middle class for my latter teenage years, went back to the 'hood' at 18 for a brief while, and now live in suburbia with the picket fence and "beautiful people' family. However, I am also now a cop, working in the hood and see/care-about/talk-to/fight-with the inner city inhabitants on a daily basis. This movie did nothing to capture even an iota of the real grit of the hood. Movies more than a decade older than 8 mile did a much better job at capturing this grit (New Jack City, 1991) (Boyz in the Hood, 1991). This movie was hard to 'get into' and the plot was decidedly blasÃ©.
But I want to get on a soapbox for moment about the gangsta lifestyle. The character "Mekhi" depicted by Brittany Murphy is a cute, sweet, genuine, pure hearted girl that looks like she's straight out of Bel Air. Give me a break. I've got news for the casting directors and writers of 8 Mile: cute, sweet, genuine, pure-hearted girls with a sweet innocent and demure laugh like Mekhi's don't hang out with no life having, "I'm so full of myself' exhibiting, gangsta emulating, disrespectful thug wannabe's who think it's cool and 'big' to talk trash to each other and exude the same traits as a wayward identity-searching Goth teen. Girls like that are girls like that because they grow up AWAY from crap like that. While there is the occasional cute girl in the hood, or the occasional sweet girl, or shy girl, or 'thinking' girl, or 'solidly grounded with both feet' girl, you would be extremely hard pressed to find one with all the traits that "Mehki' has *and* who prefers the company of the personality/behavioral types depicted in 8 mile.
In fact, I think it's the writer's way of having his cake and eating it too. Getting a chance to glorify a portion of inner city reduced-frontal-brain angst *and* pretend like that kind of hood life is so 'regular' that it can produce "Beverly hills' type sweet cute girls who don't flinch when the driver of the hoopty car they are in almost hits an on coming car head on, or look at the abandon house that has just been criminally burned down by her 'friends' and say in a soft, cutely broken voice out of a Disney movie: "It looks so beautiful". Give me a break. I think it bugs me most that some teenaged gangsta wannabe's who watch this will think they can be disrespectful, angst ridden, closed off, dangerous, and have a chip on their shoulder *and* can get a girl like that. Shyeah.
M