A Compilation of Idiots Who Can't Act Doing Dumb Stuff and Driving Around in a Broken Car

Rating: 2/10 (7 February 2017)

8 Mile is a biography following rapper 'Eminem' in a week leading up to when people started to notice his talent more, starting with a couple of freestyle rap battles.
Eminem was hired to play himself in this movie, and he does a great job...at rapping. He really does, the rap battles are the best parts of the movie, and whenever the script demands that he open his mouth to do so it's something of a treat to listen to.
As for his acting, I really can't say the same. He holds the same deadpan expression for the entire movie, whether he's being beaten up or trying to show compassion. It's always just wide open eyes like a fish, a drooping face, and a slightly gaped mouth constantly moaning 'duuuuuuuh...' At least that's how it looks. With the subject matter this movie handles, an effectively emotional performance would make or break pretty much every major scene, but all we got was deadpan Eminem trying to put some level of emotion into his voice or face but failing miserably. He's a horrid actor, and I'm so happy he never continued. As for the rest of the cast, they aren't anything special either. This is closer to being the writing's fault, but nobody bothers to try to push their characters past black stereotypes. They all talk the same, walk the same, and act the same. They're just different sizes and shapes. Now you could argue that they actually acted like that in real life, this is a biography after all. However, I am all for changing the source material for the betterment of the film. This is a film, it's entertainment. If a better actor were chosen for Eminem we could have gotten a deep and engaging character, but we just got Senior Deadpan over here. I'd have changed the source material if Eminem really was this boring of a person, then hired a better actor.
As for the writing, it's one of the main reasons this movie sucks. None of the characters are written to be interesting or deep or anything. I didn't care about any of them, especially not when they decide to spend their nights lighting houses on fire with people still in them. And yes, there is actually a scene where that happens. It's absurdly stupid. There are plenty of other dumb scenes, like two characters sneaking off during their lunch break to engage in intercourse in a factory, surrounded by machinery. Machinery that could probably kill them if turned on at the wrong moment. Then the male party in this scene has the audacity to get mad when his female counterpart goes and engages in intercourse with someone else. Maybe that would be a bigger deal if they'd known each other long enough to be 'going steady'. They knew each other for two whole days, and spoke maybe twice. It's a one-night stand, male party, do you seriously expect her to be committed to you? Apparently. I don't want to say much more, but more stupidity ensues from this already dumb situation. Seriously, there's nothing to this writing. Even the dialogue is uninspired and uninteresting. It's hopelessly average at best, horridly stupid at worst. It's like the screenplay was written by a sixth grader who just learned some new swear words and had a couple sex-ed classes. The movie is overloaded with cussing, and while I have no problem with cursing in movies, it's used in so much excess that the audience becomes numb to it, and whatever effect it had beforehand is completely lost. I couldn't tell when a line of dialogue was supposed to be emphasized because a) cussing happened in every sentence, which would normally bring emphasis to a scene but instead blended in with the rest of the dialogue and b) because all the acting was so dull that it was impossible to tell whether the characters were trying to emphasize anything they were saying.
Like I said earlier, the characters are all completely bland. Every single one is just a blatant embodiment of their own racial stereotype, save for Eminem. Although he's just a white guy acting black, so there's really nothing to his character anyway. There's this fantastically awful scene where a character forgets to take his finger off the trigger of his gun and shoots himself with it. It makes me wonder how completely stupid you'd have to be to actually manage that. And again, I don't care if it really happened, though I find that to be the most unbelievable part of the whole movie.
Overall 8 Mile is a walking trash can filled with all it's qualities. The writing is garbage, the characters are junk, and the acting is rubbish. There's nothing to this movie, save for the handful of rapping scenes. In a near 2 hour movie, there really wasn't enough rapping to save it, although even that would get old after 2 hours. In the end I would never recommend investing even a second in this movie.