BEFORE: I came back from San Diego last night - when you fly back from the West Coast, it's hard to not feel like you just lost a whole day of your life, thanks to the time zone thing. Forget that, I just lost 5 days of my life selling DVDs and animation art - sure, there were fun times and I took a lot of pictures of silly people dressed as superheroes and cartoon characters, but I was also exhausted and mentally worn out. Being surrounded by over 100,000 geeks got me to a point where I just didn't want to overhear any more pointless conversations - whether at the convention, or at a restaurant, or on the plane. I want to go live in a cabin in the woods for about a week, but instead I'm just sliding back into my old routine in NYC, which seems less than ideal.
I'm starting a new chain, it's sort of a continuation of the one I did about famous singers, like Patsy Cline in "Sweet Dreams" and Loretta Lynn in "Coal Miner's Daughter". We're just going to bust it into a rap direction. Oh, and Anthony Mackie carries over from "Captain America: the Winter Soldier". That was planned, not necessary, but why not?
AFTER: I'm well out of my comfort zone tonight, maybe even more so than when I watched horror films. I don't listen to rap, I've never paid it much mind - not in the 80's, not in the 90's, and not now. And then rap gave way to hip-hop, and house music, and then trance and dub-step and countless other variations. I sort of get beat-boxing, but when it comes to scratching and whatever else the DJ guy does, I've got no clue.
So I'm starting way behind the pack tonight - perhaps there are some things in the story of this Eminem fellow that are universal - for example, coming from a poor background, and that's the same as Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn's story, he just grew up in Detroit and not down South. And there was domestic violence in his background, and I kept encountering that again and again in those movies about singers in the 1950's.
I suppose this film lost me when it came to the "rap battles" - again, this is something that exists in a world that I don't travel in. I'm familiar with celebrity roasts, sure, where people get on stage and make fun of each other, and it gets really personal, but it's also all in good fun. This is two people getting on stage and trashing each other verbally, but it's also got to showcase clever rhyming. When you think of poetry and poets, it's hard to think of an angry poet - even the beat poets of the 60's seemed like they were trying to enact social change and fight the system, but they weren't all nasty about it.
I guess I don't why understand why someone would get up on stage and allow the other person to tear them down in such an aggressive fashion - the main character here, Rabbit, comes out on top by using some of his time putting himself down, which then gave his opponent nothing to work with. I guess that's an original solution - there's certainly nothing in "The Art of War" about falling on your own blade to win the battle, is there?
The other problem here is that footage of someone trying to learn to rap, to come up with rhymes, is just not very interesting. Neither is watching an author typing on a typewriter or computer keyboard - another thing that Hollywood shows us over and over, hoping that we'll be so enamored with the process we'll forget that it's more boring than watching paint dry.
I have to take issue with some of the messages sent out here - if Mr. Eminem is going to put himself out there and show how he got his start, I fear the devil is in the details. "Opportunity comes once in a lifetime"? Wait, I thought America was the land of opportunity. We've been raised to believe that if we concentrate and work hard, we'll succeed - telling the kids that opportunity only knocks once seems like it could discourage a lot of people. "You only get one shot" - again, I worry about the kids, and what they believe after listening to the rap music, and I'm not sure this sends out a very positive message. OK, kid, you had your shot, now you might as well work a menial job for the rest of your life, because you don't get a second chance.
Also starring Eminem, Kim Basinger (last seen in "The Real McCoy", Brittany Murphy, Mekhi Pfifer (last seen in "O"), Omar Benson Miller (last seen in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"), Evan Jones (last seen in "Gangster Squad"), Taryn Manning (last seen in "Cold Mountain"), Michael Shannon (last seen in "Man of Steel"), Eugene Byrd, with a cameo from Xhibit.
RATING: 4 out of 10 paintballs
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