Caltrops - Peter Molyneux's The Movies

Forum Overview :: Peter Molyneux's The Movies

by Fullofkittens 06/10/2003, 10:51am PDT

Finally saw it... on "On Demand Digital Cable" which is my new way to rent movies - no late fee! Sweet!

8 Mile is, of course, Eminem's semi-autobiographical movie about how hard it is to be a white rapper in a black town, especially when your mom is a white-trash hottie, and Brittany Murphy can't keep off your jock.

Surprise #1: The Detroit in the movie is actually a lot like Detroit in reality. Shady, in a non-descript with no really tall buildings kind of way. They actually talk about urban blight for awhile, which is a major problem in Detroit. Something that's funny, though, is that they call the hip-hop club The Shelter, which is a real club in Detroit, in the basement of the premier touring venue - you're more likely to see The Promise Ring in there than battle rapping. It has a really nice wooden bar with lots of glass. Strange, that they'd decide to call it The Shelter when that sort of destroys the veracity that they had going.

Surprise #2: the acting in the movie didn't suck. Eminem was pretty good, although he was maybe too willing to say the lines in the script "Your friends don't even KNOW me! (pout)" without changing them to something a little more badass. The black dudes that were his friends were all good, too, but you know, they all look the same except one was fat.

Surprise #3: the movie itself almost didn't suck, except thhat it did, for two reasons. Reason A being that it has no arc of any kind, it's just a bunch of shit that happens, and the big climax at the end has been played down by the main character so much that we basically understand that he doesn't care about it. The main reason it sucks, though, is

Surprise #4: This movie contains very little rapping. WTF? I rent the Eminem movie because I heard it contains footage of him battle rapping and I think that might be something to see. Less than 5 minutes of screen time involves rapping of any kind. Much more screen time is devoted to bullshit tangents than is devoted to what is, presumably, the reason why people would want to see the film. Where's my damn battle rapping?

2.5/5