| Panic in Detroit |
December 2002
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Eminem Scores on the Silver Screen
Rapper Eminem's first movie, 8 Mile, is a semi-autobiographical piece about the sufferings of a white trash hip-hop artist in 1990s Detroit. While the faux moralists on both the right and left continued their complaints against this coarse but talented man, he achieved something few other musicians-turned-actors have -- he made it to number 1 at the box office. Yet he did it on his reputation, not on the film itself.
The movie, apart from Marshall Mathers (M&M, Eminem, get it?) and decent performances from Britney Murphy (Clueless, Girl Interrupted, Don't Say a Word) and Mekhi Phifer ("O", Soul Food, A Lesson Before Dying), is merely a hip-hop version of The Mighty Ducks, where the outsiders eventually triumph over the odds and the "in-crowd" to take their place in the sun. Even the "Battle," where one rapper takes on another in an improv duel of talent, comes off as a needless competition to illustrate this victory of the underdog over adversity. The movie's producers don't think much of their audience's intelligence.
Nonetheless, Eminem is comfortable in front of the camera, and he is playing himself to such an extent that he can produce a credible performance. There is some rather graphic sex and drug use as well as obscenities in the film. Yet for all the whining, no one has focused on the greatest obscenity of all -- how did Detroit ever come to look like that?