Off By a Mile/ Eminem's '8 Mile' suffers from lifeless music and

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Nov 8, 2002 | by Craig Outhier

Another year, another semi-autobiographical vanity project from a platinum-selling recording artist. I believe the last one was a cinematic hydrogen bomb called "Glitter" that Mariah Carey unwittingly dropped on her own career.

Now we have "8 Mile," a promising film that, unfortunately, doesn't come off a whole lot better than the Mariah debacle. Starring rapper Eminem as a moody Detroit factory drone who dreams of striking hip-hop gold, "8 Mile" is a rueful, tedious drama that shuffles around in a chill-pad of "Flashdance" cliches while delivering perhaps one or two invigorating musical sequences.

In his screen debut, Eminem plays Jimmy Smith Jr., a rhyme- busting lad so dirt poor he uses a Hefty bag as a suitcase and can afford only one tattered piece of yellow notebook paper on which to scrawl his raps. Known by his friends as Rabbit, Jimmy routinely treks across Detroit's 8 Mile Road - traditionally the line of demarcation between black and white Detroit - to hone his skills at rap competitions.

Directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Curtis Hanson ("L.A. Confidential"), "8 Mile" is essentially the story of how Jimmy overcomes stage fright to mount a Rocky-esque assault on Detroit's arrogant hip-hop elite, earning the acceptance and respect of black hip-hop fans in the process. It's a sort of racially inverted Jackie Robinson story that might have made for a really top-shelf short film but is sunk here by lazy, rudderless subplots and secondary characters that aren't worth caring about.

Like all rappers, Jimmy has an entourage, but it's nothing you'd want to drag to the Grammys. Mekhi Phifer ("O") gives a smooth, likable performance as Future, Jimmy's dreadlocked benefactor, but the rest of the crew is irritatingly pat: the jovial fat guy, the bespectacled political radical and, of course, the goofy white buffoon.

Nothing Jimmy does with his posse is remotely profound or amusing, save a scene where they burn down a tenement used in a child murder, which apparently qualifies as public service in crime-scarred Detroit.

The screen time Hanson wastes on these characters could have been used to beef up Jimmy's most interesting relationship - that with his mother (Kim Basinger), a terminally lazy welfare case so skanky that she beds one of Jimmy's old high school classmates. As a dysfunctional woman hopelessly perplexed by the adult world, Basinger is excellent, but the character is underdeveloped. At least, we don't see quite enough of her to understand what warranted "Cleaning Out My Closet," Eminem's scathing hit about his real-life mother.

As Jimmy's aspiring-model love interest, Brittany Murphy ("Don't Say a Word") gives the kind of bemused, breezy performance typically employed by actors when they're handed a role with no substance.

Eminem is an adequate leading man, drawing effortlessly from a bristling intensity that seems to promise good things to come. But he doesn't display much emotional depth in this particular performance, especially in moments that require some display of vulnerability. What appears to be feisty pride at the outset of the movie reveals itself to be little more than petulant, adolescent crankiness, and Jimmy spends the majority of the film stomping around, pouting and punching things.

Frustratingly, the music in "8 Mile" is a major disappointment. Most of the rapping is of the snarky, "Yo mama is so fat ..." variety, which seems beneath Eminem. Nothing in "8 Mile" feels as witty or challenging or intellectually daring as his studio work. The hip-hop, as they say, never comes alive.

In fact, Eminem actually uses the movie to soak up some of the public relations spills that his music career has caused. Most notably, he extends an olive branch to gays.

When he told his mama he was cleaning out his closet, he wasn't kidding.

'8 MILE'

RATING: C

STARRING: Eminem, Kim Basinger, Mekhi Phifer, Brittany Murphy

DIRECTOR: Curtis Hanson

PLAYING AT: Carmike, Tinseltown, Chapel Hills, Cinemark.

RATED: R (strong profanity, sexuality, some violence and drug use)

RUNNING TIME: 111 minutes