** out of 5

Rating: Null/10 (9 December 2002)

One upon a time there was a film, which starred a rapper that took place on the broken streets of a worn down town. The film dealt with such issues as friendship and striving to achieve greatness with the very little you have been given. That film was called Boyz N The Hood and it has come to be one of the most powerful blacksplotion flicks to every emerge from Hollywood. Now, over ten years later, we have 8 Mile, a film starring number one selling rapper Eminem, that touches on some of the same basic principles as Boyz... Foul-mouthed, white-boy rapper who feuds with his mom and tries to raise his young daughter (this must have been a real stretch for our star). Rabbit lives in a trailer with his mom and her boyfriend whom he hates and vice versa. He wants to be a rapper but finds it a struggle not only with the crowds but also with himself to follow through with his dream. In the opening scene we see Rabbit in the washroom of a local club called the Shelter preparing himself for a battle. But as his eyes gaze over the room he catches a quick glimpse of himself in the mirror and throws up. Seems that maybe Rabbit doesn't have the belief in himself that we first thought he did. For the rest of the film his must face every imaginable roadblock that life can throw at him. He gets in a fight with his mom's boyfriend and gets kicked out, he finds his girl having sex with one of his friends in the studio where he was supposed to record his demo and he keeps getting hassled by another group of rappers known as Free World. The trailer showed this film as being a hard-edged, gritty drama but it seems that the film is nothing more than one big practical joke. Eminem is probably laughing right now as he is sitting in his multi-million dollar mansion counting our hard-earned money. See every time you think the film is going to throw something serious at your face it instead throws a sucker-punch and slaps you with a bit of comedy, ruining the entire build-up of the scene. For example Rabbit comes home to hear that his mom and her boyfriend are fighting. He asks her what's wrong. "He heard about the eviction?" He asks her. Her reply is no, the problem is that he won't go down on her. In the film's first single Loose Yourself Emienm sings "You better loose yourself in the music, the moment, your own it, you better never let it go." I suppose that this song is referring to the rap-offs he takes place in know as battles because that is the only rapping he does this entire film. But if that is the case I don't know what there is to loose yourself in. These battles consist of no more than two rappers who are given 45 seconds to see who can be the most offensive to the other. Some of the lyrics during these battles are even as much as boarder-line comedy. The best way to describe watching this film would be to compare it to listening to Eminem's music. You listen to a song like Loose Yourself and you feel that maybe Eminem isn't just some money making gimmick. He sings about following your dreams and making the best out of what life gives you. Then you flip to a song like The Real Slim Shady or Without me, exposing him for what he really is. I found myself thinking through films most effective moments "how can I take a guy seriously who sings about gay bashing." This film only got made because Eminem sold a million records. That's not to say that Eminem did a bad job in the acting department. In fact he handled himself rather well for his first role, but again, even though he gave a good performance I still couldn't help but get a feeling of insincerity while watching him. Next comes Kim Basinger as Rabbit's mom. Basinger seems to be trying so hard that her performance comes off as hammy and over-played. I guess no one let her in on the joke, she acts as if she is the only one on screen trying to do a professional job. I happen to like Mekhi Phifer a lot. I thought he was very good in O and he appears to be carrying this film on his shoulders. His character is a sign of hope and strong ethical friendships, a man who will not let anyone who he believes in fail and Phifer gets that across rather well. Within the film there appears to be two scenes that aren't either making a mockery of themselves or being just plain boring. On in which Rabbit gets into a fight with his mom's boyfriend and during his angry fit of rage, consisting of a stream of never-ending profanity, he sees his daughter and instantly stops. The other is of the same nature when his daughter is witnessing him beat the crap out of his mom's boyfriend. Both of these scenes just broke my heart because it seems so horrifying that an innocent child could be subject to such inhuman acts. Because these two were the most effective I was disappointed that the film didn't show more of the personal relationship between Rabbit and his daughter. In fact almost everything the film presents is almost immediately dropped. To talk about why this film didn't work entertainment wise was mainly due to bad scripting. In Boyz... we were able to feel the central characters pain because we lived a day in his shoes and went through all of his hardships. There were also very powerful lines like "can't we just have one night where nobody gets shot?" There are no powerful, or even all that meaningful lines in this film. We are never really given the change to know Rabbit either. He goes into his wild fits of rage but never slows down to explain his state and let the audience feel for him, making the film rather boring. If we have no information about a character how can we feel for them? If we can't care for them how can we enjoy watching them? See where I am going? Also the story is just plain bad due to its sketchiness. We know that Rabbit's dream is to become a rapper and his talks about making his demo but the film packs up and ends so quickly that we never really figure out what Rabbit's future could hold for him and if he will pursue his dreams. We are also left without any concrete message that the film is supposedly trying to get across. The final scene shows Rabbit walking down an alley, when the music kicks in. At that point I thought to myself "Finally the film is going to get started. Just then the scene cut to black and the credits started rolling. I had to sit for a moment in silence and wonder what I was supposed to make of what I had just saw. So when it comes down to it, this was a film that could have been but wasn't quite because it failed to possess the emotion it needed to accomplish its purpose and instead just threw together a bunch of rehashed material to fit its big star.