8 Mile

So I finally got around to watching Eminem’s moment of movie glory. And hey, it’s a damn good film. Simple, obvious, unimaginative? Hey, maybe, but it was done damn well. Many critics took objection to the fact that Rabbit’s story bears more than a passing resemblance to Eminem’s, and it’s no stretch to play yourself on film. But that’s crap. 90% of the performances you see onscreen are actors playing characters similar to themselves – that’s why they’re cast. And you still get a hell of a lot worse acting than Eminem’s, which was pretty damn good. He may never play another character, but he did a damn good job here, and not once in the movie did I think he was just a musician trying to act.

The story is your typical Rocky set, only Rabbit doesn’t have a montage where he improves miraculously in a ridiculously short time. In the beginning, he chokes (doesn’t say a work in the rap battle), and in the end, he doesn’t. It’s as simple as that. To be honest, it’s a whole lot more believable.

The rap battles themselves are definitely the highlight of the movie. I mean, yeah, the Dozens are a pretty terrifying prospect to the uninitiated: most of us middle-classed white folk don’t much like the sound of standing there being abused, and then trying your best to abuse back, but hey, it’s a game, and it’s not a hard one to understand. What’s impressive is the skill of rapping. A lot of musical snobs dismiss rap, and it IS a very simple art form (but so is most pop music), but improvisational rap is different. Sure, dozens of comedians improvise songs; I’ve done it, and it’s just a case of thinking up a good, simple rhyme, and using it while thinking of the next one. But the rhythms good rappers use, and the pressure of the situation are another thing altogether. While I don’t really think Rabbit should have won his first comeback round, his final rap was genius. What’s even better, though, is that we see the unglamorous side of the rap, the need to sit with a pencil and laboriously come up with rhymes, and build up an arsenal that you can use later. It takes hard work to be good at rap – and I’m very glad to see that represented.

But in all honesty, the movie isn’t really about rap. It gives it a hook, and a big finale, but ultimately, rap isn’t making superstars of white trash. Yeah, it happened to Eminem, but he’s one of millions. Dr Dre doesn’t appear to whisk Bunny Rabbit off to LA. What the movie is really about is life in the trailer parks, on the outskirts of predominantly black Detroit. About a mother who sticks with an abusive man just because he gives her hope of a future, and about cheating girlfriends, and about a tight group of friends. It’s nothing particularly new, but again, it’s done very well.

All in all, I enjoyed the movie a lot more than I had expected to. It won’t change my life, but it was an enjoyable ride.