by Daniel Erenberg

So after the monstrous rush to see every supposedly Oscar-worthy film that came out in the tail-end of December in order to be eligible for award consideration (by the way, who are you kidding, Defiance?) the first film of 2009 that I give a shit about is Notorious. Notorious is a lovely Alfred Hitchcock film, but now it is also a very Ray-like biopic about the life of Christopher Wallace, the dude who wrote “Big Poppa” and “Hypnotize” and brought the world the crabs-filled menace of Lil’ Kim. And, just to reiterate, we are still waiting on the long in-development biopics of Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley and Janis Joplin, but you can check out the Notorious B.I.G’s life in theaters now in a film produced by P. Diddy and directed by the guy who made Soul Food.
 

My biggest worry going into this film was that it would idealize the life of the departed rapper way too much, what with his good friend, the Didster, in the producer’s seat. Notorious isn’t a bad movie though. In fact, I’d wager that it’s the first good movie of the year (this year’s Cloverfield, but even scarier). And it certainly doesn’t idealize Biggie’s life. In fact, I went into the film a Notorious B.I.G. fan, and now I fucking hate him.

There’s a scene early on in the movie where child-Biggie sees some douche on the street wearing gaudy gold chains, so he decides to be a drug dealer. We flash forward to teen-Biggie carrying a gun in his pants and hiding crack rock beneath his bed. His long-suffering mother, well-played by Angela Bassett, still doesn’t know about his crack-slinging. Of course, this film is completely unreliable because I doubt anyone knew who this guy really was. We trace him through three romantic relationships, with his first baby mama, Lil’ Kim and Faith Evans and he treats them all like shit. We see his friendships with dudes like Sean “Puffy” Combs and Tupac Shakur and he’s a total dick to both of them (he has a temper tantrum at the Source Awards about a pair of shoes that don’t fit, which is the wussiest thing I’ve ever seen a self-described “playa” do). And, worst of all, he’s awful to his mother, the most sympathetic character in the film. At Biggie’s funeral (spoiler alert!) we see how proud she is of her son. But why? Why, I ask. Homeboy was a prick. A horrible, horrible prick who put out two good records, but whose gangster rap personality we are all hopefully far beyond at this stage.
 

So the Soul Food guy did an okay job, newcomer Jamal Woolard gives a phenomenal performance as Smalls and Bassett is What’s Love Got To Do With It-good. And I can’t fault the film for being honest about Christopher Wallace’s life. But I never want to listen to Ready To Die ever again, man. And too bad. I used to really like that dude.

C+

Tags: Notorious movie review Biggie Smalls
January 19, 2009 at 4:26pm ∞