.co.uk

If hearing Eminem's voice on numerous radio stations and music television channels wasn't enough, director Curtis Hanson decided to create the rags-to-riches Hip-Hop musical 8 Mile to exhaust all mainstream possibilities and tell the world how great the white rapper is.

I don't really hate Eminem; admittedly, I did enjoy some of the tracks on The Marshall Mathers LP when it was released (the best album he's ever done). It's just that anything he has done since then seems like an excuse to make Hip-Hop more acceptable to a commercial audience: Gone are the days of him wanting to 'Kill You'; he now prefers to dress up as a superhero for the video of 'Without Me', declaring himself as the saviour of popular music. After all, a white face at the forefront of the culture means more money for the A & R offices of the music industry, and if the people are willing to buy what's put in front of them then the man is going to exploit his target audience as much as he can. Who needs street cred?

Primarily, 8 Mile is a film that the middle-class white youth -- particularly those who feel rather rebellious after listening to the rapper extraordinaire -- will lap up. The story is concerned with Jimmy Smith Jr. (Eminem), an aspiring rap artist who has a go at participating in live emcee battles, but ends up choking when it's his turn to freestyle. Winning these battles will get him noticed, which will hopefully then land him a record deal, so he refuses to give up despite the numerous boos from audiences he receives. Soon enough, he becomes involved in a heated feud with a rival group of emcees entitled "Leaders of the Free World", whom spit personal insults regularly at Rabbit and his dysfunctional trailer park family (including Kim Basinger as the Mother), and the odds look even more stacked against him.

8 Mile's main theme is self-expression, and how it can overcome one's personal insecurities. Like poetry, rap is Rabbit's form of escapism: He desires to be authentic in his emotions, expressing himself on the microphone so that the whole crowd can hear. Easily the most exciting moments of the film come when Eminem is "freestyling" against other emcees. There's a moment when he moons the audience with his white anus following a verse, and later sticks his middle finger in the face of his rival -- this made him seem like the controversial Eminem of old.

When he's not rapping, however, it's a stark contrast. "Rabbit", as his friends call him, is a timid fellow, walking around with his hood covering his head, rarely speaking, and stopping occasionally to write rhymes on his scruffy bits of paper. As an actor, it seems that Eminem is considerably lacking in charisma, and fails to make us believe his character has dreams that go beyond his dirty, trailer-trash background. The scenes involving him, his mother and little sister have potential, but there's no emotional weight to them; they're just fillers before the big rap battles.

Actually, most of the characters in 8 Mile are pretty lame and uninteresting. The main group of friends never really do anything outside of going to rap battles, apart from sitting around and listening to music; and Brittany Murphy is the token white-trash girlfriend to Rabbit, who occasionally lurks in the background, anticipating the next move of her soon-to-be-star boyfriend. Scott Silver's script seems pretty convinced that we should be worshipping Eminem for all his greatness as a music artist and waiting patiently on his next exciting rap battle, so much so that we don't require any entertaining in-between.

8 Mile isn't particularly a bad film, all in all, but it's hardly gripping, either. Eminem fanboys will no doubt tell you that it's the best film they've ever seen; for a more interesting look at Hip-Hop culture, though, I'd definitely recommend checking out Juice, New Jack City and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.

(C) Andy Carrington, 2009.