A famous rap artist, Eminem otherwise known as Slim Shady had decided to embark on the making of a film and came up with the idea of incorporating everyday life and his love of music into the production.
The media have created the image that this film has small resemblance with the rap-artist, and has nothing to do with Eminem’s life or childhood and is in fact a story pact with controversial ideas and a tale of determination and faith.
Eminem plays a character named Jimmy who is also known as Rabbit to his friends and Elvis to his enemies. Jimmy's story exists within a rough neighborhood district in Detroit where the drama takes place. Rap artistry takes place within ghetto, where social groups of multicultural backgrounds come together in a passionate battle against their opponent through lyrical expression.
Jimmy makes a living by working at a heavy machine company, making cars. Unfortunately, he realizes that he needs to earn more money and so decides to ask his Boss for more shifts. Upon hearing this requirement, his Supervisor looks at him with and expression of astonishment at the utter rudeness of his question. Our main character now realizes this is a ‘No Win’ situation and decides not to press this on any further.
The film commenced by informing us that Jimmy has split with his pregnant girlfriend. As an audience member, I feel the part of Jimmy’s girlfriend is underplayed and thus as a character, she is irresponsibly pushed to the side and neglected, whereas more emphasis could have been placed on her. The thing that I would change in the film would be concentrate more on the ex girl friend and see how the wellbeing of her unborn child is doing without the company of her boy friend (rabbit).
My favorite character was Jimmy as he had to cope with the difficult behavior of his Mother’s untrustworthy boyfriend. Jimmy is a strong character and Mathshall Mathers played the part accordingly to my expectations. This is as I think the character should be white (in order to emphasize the racial conflict) who has a strong mobility to use his strength to keep his anger to a low level throughout the scenes.
Mathshall Mathers took the role of the character immediately in to his own hands, as he was brave and trustworthy. Jimmy’s stance is slouched and week, emphasizing the fact that he is a gaunt boy in his late teens. The other opponents are black, stout and of large stance with lots of muscle tone. I am surprised Jimmy had the courage on his second attempt to dismiss him as he did so, because they were much bigger than him.
Jimmy leaves her his car to his ex because it is more important for her to have it, and that's all he has to offer. Jimmy is left with a problem of how to get to work on time,(his mum offers him a car) and he's already asking the his superviser for more hours. His mother (Kim Basinger) is beautiful women in her late 30’s, she is a poor, broken down mum who gets upset easily from her jobless sit-around boyfriend (Michael Shannon).
Jimmy, carrying his clothes around in a bin bag, decides to stay at his mum's home and has to cope with her lover (who is the same age as him). He constantly sulks and mopes around as a sign that he doesn't approve.
At a hip-hop club, Jimmy is set to perform, but then chokes before a black audience.
He's a white Elvis that doesn't belong making black music, at least that's how he feels. But towards the middle of the film Jimmy gets into conflict (not physically but verbally). He try’s again for a second time performing, this time he meets his requirements.
While most things are going well for Jimmy, his Mothers is being physically abused by her jobless boyfriend. Jimmy can’t take any more of it, so he shows him how he feels in front of his little sister Lilly and hits him across the face.
It takes half the movie before Jimmy has a crush on Alex (Brittany Murphy). But later on in the film he finds out Alex has been cheating on him. But, predictably so, everything ends up fine in the end and Jimmy follows on towards a successful career in rap artistry.
Finally Jimmy can go up on stage without choking and get on with verbal abuse to his opponent (at which point, I assumed this to be a strange ‘happy ending’).
In this film the love between Jimmy and his little sister Lillie is very strong. Like the way he sings the song to her and also comforts her when his mum is distraught.
The most important scenes in this movie is the hip hop club. The producer thought well to make this one of the most focussed part of the film.
As I had mentioned before, I find it crazy that Hanson could direct a film with a character who’s sole purpose is to get ‘good’ at having verbally abusive contests. Although the film was giving an age rating of fifteen, the producers must have known that by having such an influential rap star as their main character, they were obviously going to be making a film which will be watched by a lot of young children. If this is so then I think it is wrong to have such explicit feelings being encouraged to be expressed in the name of music.
In my opinion the film was just a way Eminem could show himself off to a wider audience, worldwide. The rating I wold give this film would be 4/10 as I didn’t really enjoy the film as much as I had expected. This is as, at first I believed critics words of it being a story which would give me a stronger view on rap and hip hop music and why it is so popular to people. Instead I got irritated with most of the characters’ ‘cheezyness’ and pathetic attitudes towards life.
After watching the film, I disagreed strongly with my first quote as I don’t think it is just a story of a poor little white boy wanting to become a rap star. In fact in Hanson's 8 Mile Mr. Mathers plays a genius rapper from the wrong side of town, attempting to reach his dream despite racial prejudice, poverty and family problems. Personally I think Mather’s first film doesn't get much more autobiographical than this.
