Notorious

Well, I guess if there’s anything I am knowledgeable about to have a decent opinion on, it would be the bio-pic of Biggie (not that’s its stopped me in the past, or will in the future). Since it’s a given that I will purchase anything that includes something new about Biggie (hence why I purchased the soundtrack to this, for three songs off his demo tape), and that he didn’t document stuff in a Pac-like fashion so that a trove of post-humanous material could be released, I’ve pretty much gotten as much as you can get about the life of Christopher Wallace (at least as much as is possible for a white guy living in the suburbs).

Before we get to what I liked and disliked about the movie, let’s first talk about everything that happened before it started. I initially wanted to see this movie last weekend but a few things came up, so I didn’t see it until the 2nd weekend it was out (which wasn’t a bad thing, considering people got stabbed at the openings in NYC). So I ended up seeing a Saturday afternoon show. I walked in and was the only white person in the theater, so this was fun. Luckily a white girl showed up 2 minutes in so I wasn’t the least ghetto person in the place. To make sure of this, she wore Uggs to this movie. Timbs for my hooligans in Brooklyn this wasn’t. I also noted that it had a 12:15 start time, but the previews didn’t start until 12:20. A tip of the hat goes out to AMC Theaters for knowing their target audience, and starting the show late to factor in for CP time. So before the show even started, I was pretty entertained. Then, they had the trailer for this movie previewed:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1198138/
Let me say that I was highly entertained by a preview of a movie about a black man getting in trouble for getting with a white girl. If I was still in college, I would purchase this DVD and have it running on a continuous loop for Floyd Banks and O. And I would laugh for 2 hours straight. Also, am I supposed to feel sorry for this guy? Oh no, my marriage to Beyonce is going down the drain because Ali Larter wants to sleep with me. These aren’t problems I have too much sympathy for.

Alright, onto the movie itself. And you wonder why Roger Ebert doesn’t go into 400 word intros. I found it entertaining as a whole. I did however, feel that it didn’t go into the detail I would have liked and found a lot of parts just glossed over and given a few minutes on screen. The 100 running minutes was way too short for me, but I understand that Fox probably isn’t catering to the person who is looking for more details (a lot of which were handled extremely well, discussed later on). The masses aren’t looking for 30 minutes to be spent on the in depth making of Ready to Die. From an overall plot perspective, it pretty much was a 2 hour VH1 show (Side note because I wouldn’t want this to have any semblance of cohesion. When I was working at the Rec back in 2002, the VH1 Behind the Music for Biggie came out. My main man Rocket had this comment to say: “I saw the Behind the Music last night. I didn’t know The Notorious B.I.G. died,” and I couldn’t tell if he was being facetious or not. For some reason, this absolutely killed me. I’m cracking up as I’m writing this. You’re not getting it? Ok, fine. Maybe you just don’t appreciate the comedic genius that was Rocket.)

Two things I think we’re done very well. First was the casting. Not that I believed it was Big on screen, but the one they did get was as close as you’re going to get. He did pull it off as well as it can be done. Lil Kim and Faith Evans were good enough that there was no difference in my mind between the actresses and the real people. So that was good. The other thing that I really liked was the small details that showed they had done their homework on Biggie. For example, Big did want Machine Gun Funk to be his first single, he was actually banging girls in the studio before rhyming “Chickenheads be clucking in my bathroom fucking” and he was in a piece of shit rental when he got into the accident.

Things I didn’t like? As mentioned before, I thought it was too short and some things were glossed over (His relationship with Kim for example. Also, why he not doing his verse of Get Money during the Junior Mafia concert?). Also, there should have been a warning before any sex scene involving him. I would have also liked to have seen some more on how he went about writing his rhymes. I’m sorry, but having a high as hell Lil’ Cease insinuate that he may or may not be writing stuff down isn’t good enough. That should have been covered a lot more.

Finally, the most important question, did I cry at the end of the movie? The answer is no, there were no tears, but my eyes did water up when Hypnotize came on during his funeral procession. There, I said it. Let’s not talk about this again.

Overall, a good movie that didn’t do anything to disappoint, which I was afraid of. And now for my obligatory comparison that requires me to compare this movie to his albums. It’s not Ready to Die, but it’s not the train wreck that was the Duets album.