Sooooo bad. . .

Rating: 4/10 (24 November 2002)

Alright, after seeing 8 Mile I have decided that it is quite possibly one of the worst movies I have seen in a long time. I don't think there is any way I can compile a definitive statement on how bad I felt the movie was so I will simply list all my gripes about the movie. I am going to spoil some of the movie so if you haven't seen this movie yet you may not want to read this.
1) Eminem gets to beat up a guy twice his size because it's his movie.
2) The scene where they have sex in the factory is just stupid. You can't do that.
3) The scene where Rabbit is trapped in a burning building and can't get out. Dramatic music starts playing and it gets really tense like OH MY GOD WHAT WILL HAPPEN. Then he very calmly and cooly goes and jumps out the window and nothing happens. The movie just leads you one way and then cuts back another way and does it quite poorly.
4) The cameramen and cinematographer have an inexcusably bad understanding of how to shoot a movie. The camera jumps from one side of a scene to another completely at random. This may not bother some people but for me it's very jarring and disorienting and makes the movie look amateurish.
5) Another technical gripe. The lighting is dramatic ALL THE TIME. In every scene one side of Rabbit's face is completely blacked out. Even in scenes where there is clearly a light source on the dark side of his face.
6) Why do the people who've just burned down a building (a felony) just stand around proud of themselves and not even worry for a second about cops or anything?
7) There are about five scenes in the movie where Rabbit's crappy car wont start.
8) They never say whether the little girl in the movie is his daughter or his sister. I am guessing sister but they could have made it clearer.
9) The movie has no introduction and no conclusion. You are just thrust suddenly in to Rabbit's trailer-park life and how he has just broken up with his girlfriend but there's no real explaination or background for either of those. In some movies they do this well where there's some mystery about things that are slowly revealed, but in 8 Mile there is no purpose for this.
10) The ending of the movie has no point. He wins the battle, his friend offers for him to host the battles with him, and he says "No, I just gotta do my own thing." and walks off down an alley. What's the point?
11) The whole point of the movie is how these people are all living their lives wrong and not doing anything and are never going to get better. But then his mom goes to bingo and wins $3200 dollars. Not every movie has to have a cheery ending or a beautiful message, but what kind of a moral is that?!
12) More about the ending. I couldn't tell whether it all worked out for him in the end and they lived happily-ever-after or if his life got screwed up. What happened?! What's the point of all this?!
13) People say this is supposed to be such an accurate description of early/mid-ninties Detroit. I have two problems with that. Does everyone in the entire town rap? Is it really that hard to replicate conditions of an urban setting a whopping 10 years ago?
14) What is the point of that other white guy Cheddar Bob who shoots himself in the groin? I mean, you could say comic relief but he's really more stupid than funny, and all his other friends are by far funnier (i.e. when one of them calls the other one Fredrick Douglas)
That's all the complaints about this movie that I have the energy to think up right now. I have nothing against Eminem, and his acting surprisingly was not the worst part of this movie. However I hope this horrible movie discourages him from trying to act and sticking to rapping, which not-surprisingly was the best part of this movie.