A successful "Musical" but quirky to say the least

Rating: 8/10 (11 August 2003)

I am way "behind the wave" of posting my viewpoint on such an influential movie; I live in Michigan and must agree that such a "true life" filmed project needed to have been filmed on location to establish its veracity and mood. So as to establish its time frame, the director/screenwriter furthermore mention that it is set in the late 1990's. As a film released at the height of Eminem's (Marshall Mathers') musical influence in the area of rap/hip-hop, it does a great job of revealing how this artist's version of "rap" is born out of the working poor of the American Midwest. A musical set in an urban ghetto is rather far from the typical Hollywood feature and it does go off in some quite odd directions. I was relieved that the young child was not molested by a rapist in a run-down house and only slightly befuddled how the burning of an abandoned slum house was viewed as not having any substantial side-effects (e.g. catching other nearby housing on fire or injuring any of the young men who spray the incendiary materials around). Certain of the conventional plot devices that could have been utilized are discretely undermined; for example, the disfigurement of being in a fight just before the film finale musical "number" is referred to by the hero in his disabling rap to Papa Doc. A quite comparable film, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, treats Tony's injuries before the final dance sequence as just being casually not worth noticing. The director has negotiated a quirky film that's really not spliced together video sequences and instead significantly tries to bring some of the despair of America's desperate poor to the attention of the entire youth subculture. I rate it as an 8 kind of in acknowledgment of its calling itself after the landmark Detroit "dividing line."