The Grass Is Greener At The Trailer Park

Rating: 1/10 (5 January 2003)

There's no denying that Eminem has an intensity that's initially charismatic along with a definite rhythmic and verbal flair sufficient these days to enrapture large portions of the suburban young. What isn't adequately observed, though, is the extreme narrowness of his art as revealed in this film. Essentially, he's engaging here in merely occasional poetry, extended rhymed insults which don't merit hearing - in my view - apart from the circumstances which give rise to them. Nevertheless he has been hailed for these in some quarters as a genius, whereas he reveals at most a modest talent. His acting, too - if indeed he is an actor - has been overrated, given the limited requirements both the story and the semi-biographical role in "8 Mile" place upon him. Largely, he moves through the film in a single mood, one in which a charismatic intensity is joined to a pretty consistent, if cryptic, self-fascination. His role is actually the sentimental one of noble savage, but freed of lumpenproletariat trappings, so we find him here - oddly enough - both defending gays and sporting not a single tattoo. A low view of women, however, remains essentially intact. The film in itself is a contemporary variant of that genre which has been called the "slum pastoral." Virtue, authenticity and even real creative spark are to be found apparently only where both philosophy and experience would lead us least to expect them - among certain insulted and injured trailer park types. Presumably, a middle-class or even more privileged upbringing by itself would disequip one for real achievement in the field of rap music. In short, this film reeks of what the satirist Tom Wolfe in a different context identified as a mind-numbing "nostalgia for the mud."