BETTY BOWERS REVIEWS

    Rapper Eminem's First Movie

    8 Mile
Eminem's costar Brittany Murphy has the my-lipstick-is-smudged-because-I-just-had-some-stranger-in-my-mouth look down so convincingly, she now makes Courtney Love appear as authentically skanky as Olivia Newton John did at the end of Grease
For a movie that takes place in a trailer, I think I will begin my review with the solemnly intoned voiceovers always used in trailers for predictable movies marketed as important films:

In a country that has a president who works feverishly to appear as he is not . . .

Intelligent

Competent

[even longer dramatic pause]

Sober

In a place where the entertainment press rushes to heap praise on actors who don't happen to work in DC . . .

One man

A white trash rapper

Manages against all odds

To pass himself off as

Well, a white trash rapper

[music picks up tempo -- lots of quick cuts of serious star crying and then smiling serenely]

Not since never-nominated Madonna played an ego-freak who viewed every blow job as a career move ["Evita"]

Not since Marlee Matlin won an Oscar® for playing a deaf woman who spoke like a drunken eight-year-old ["Children of a Lesser God"]

Has one actor received such praise for playing

Himself

While many unobservant, secular theatergoers will think 8 Mile is simply a story about how a cute white boy can do the one thing urban Negroes seem to value – only better -- I, as a True Christian, quickly saw the real message of this movie. Not that keeping minorities in their place isn't an important Baptist pastime, but there are even more enjoyable things going on here. As soon as I saw Eminem surrounded by a hostile city of swarthy Negroes, I immediately thought of another light-skinned, Nordic-eyed person who had also been forced to live with dark-skinned riffraff who never bathed: Jesus!

With 8 Mile, Hollywood is giving us The Greatest Story Ever Told Part II. All the same overly-dramatic characters are there, but the setting has moved from a filthy, backwards and impoverished land (Palestine) to a filthy, backwards and impoverished city (Detroit).

If Cole Porter were still alive and had the misfortune to drive through Detroit, he would slurp a dry martini and sing from behind the tinted glass of his (hopefully) swiftly moving limo:

It's de-sintergrating,

It's de-lapidated,

It's de-sgusting –

It's De-troit!

You see, Hollywood can't resist a sequel. In fact, the only thing that is allowed to age in LA is an idea. And devotion to a previously used concept is the one loyalty that seems to hold sway in the film industry. (How else can one comprehend the otherwise inexplicable existence of any Tim Allen vehicle, much less The Santa Clause 2?)

But we shouldn't be too hard on Tinseltown. The Lord Himself, the true screenwriter for 8 Mile, is also rather fond of milking a successful project with a heavily promoted follow-up. After all, Heaven rushed to release Gospel I, Gospel II, Gospel III and Gospel IV on the heels of the success of the wildly dramatic, syndicated Torah. The Gospels franchise went on to out-gross the original by employing a crowd-pleasing dramatic device tantamount to Jesus stepping out of a hot shower and telling Victoria Principal that all of the Lord's many persnickety dietary laws had all been just a bad dream.

Well, looking at the cast of 8 Mile, no one has stepped out of any showers in recent memory. And the city they live in looks dirtier than the rim of a bulimic's toilet bowl. What A Room With A View did for Florence, 8 Mile will not do for Detroit. While most people think that the Motorcity is behind the times, 8 Mile's dreary cinematography convincingly proves the contrary. Detroit is quite clearly the only city in America that has already been through the Lord's Apocalypse. And from the looks of buildings and automobiles in this movie, the horrors in Revelation appear to have been somewhat understated. Honestly, wasn't the icy bitchiness of Diana Ross enough for one city?

Eminem allows so many people to browbeat him, my Bringing Integrity To Christian Homemakers companion 82-year-old Mrs. Helen Floribunda took to screeching at the screen every time Marshall Mathers appeared, "Feminem!" before she dropped her Milk Duds and dozed off into a diabetic coma. Yes, Eminem was rather fey, but what do you expect from an actor named after a candy that boasts that it is available without nuts?

In 8 Mile, Jesus (Eminem) has returned to warn Americans who bathe, but blithely go about sinning that Hell is a lot closer than they think. And it apparently has the area code 313. As if to underscore how diabolically unpleasant Jesus' Hell will be, the film is shot in rooms that make the mildewed crack house accommodations in Fight Club look like the pristine, vulgar affluence of In Style magazine's pictorial of Jennifer Lopez' crib. Indeed, the only shrewd decorating idea in the entire movie involved several cans of gasoline and a lighter.

Brittany Murphy plays Mary Magdalene (now androgynously called Alex). She is one of only two white girls in the entire city of Detroit who don't live with Eminem. Apparently, white suburban ticket holders think it OK to steal black people's music and look, but when it comes to their women, miscegenation is still too gross to watch while eating popcorn. Brittany Murphy looks like a young Courtney Love – in the sense that she gives off the aurora of someone who has packed an equivalent amount of drug abuse into fewer years. Once, actresses made you think "heroine." Now, their vacant gaze makes you think "heroin." Eminem fornicates with Miss Murphy at his factory in a shocking scene that proves that his raps are not the only thing finished in 45-second.

Kim Bassinger, as Dogpatch's very own Mrs. Robinson, is sleeping with one of Eminem's classmates who doesn't mind falling face first into the carpet, as long it is isn't hers (I'm too much of a Christian to elaborate on that, dear). From Kim's accent, Metropolitan Detroit stretches well into Appalachia to include the town of Butcher Hollow featured in Coalminer's Daughter.

It is clear that Miss Bassinger, looking justifiably haggard from her tempestuous relationship with Alex Baldwin, is meant to evoke Jesus' mother, Mary. She is clearly a Mary-Worshiper herself as she is obsessed with the one thing Catholics care about more than even kissing the filthy plaster feet of sundry blood-dripping idols – bingo.

And what is the message of this foul-mouthed foretelling of Armageddon? That salvation is the simplest thing in the world! This dramatic point is made by having Eminem "win" by engaging in the most effortless task imaginable: thinking of ways to insult people who are so stupid, they still live in Detroit.
CLICK HERE to read Betty's Exclusive interview with Eminem and to hear Eminem's rap for Betty "Take a Good Look at the Good Book"