I have heard some talk about the latest musical biopic being “anti-climactic,” which might be one of the most hilarious things you could possibly say about what is meant to be a serious and informative docu-drama about one of the biggest figures in rap history. No pun intended. The movie starts off with a shooting that arguably not a single person in any audience doesn’t already know about, and then jumps decades back in time to tell the story of the man we just saw get shot. Given that, I’m not sure what the expected climax was supposed to be.
The re-creation of the shooting is remarkably well-done, but unfortunately, the minute we cut back to Biggie’s childhood it becomes abundantly clear that the movie has all the stylistic depth of a set of stereo instructions.
I remember the first film production class I took at Fresno City College back in 1998. The first lesson we learned was in preparation for an assignment to make a music video, which was really little more than a lot of (hopefully) meaningful video footage edited together over a music track. “Lesson #1,” the instructor says, “is that if your song says ‘I would climb the highest mountain for you,’ don’t show a guy climbing a mountain!”
I guess director Derek Tillman Jr. didn’t have any lessons like that, because he spoon-feeds us plot points throughout a lot of the movie like we’re all squabbling babies unable to make important story connections.
We meet young Wallace as a little chubby kid in Brooklyn, struggling with his image as the fat kid and trying to find a place where he, ah, fits in. Life is definitely pretty dreary for him, both in and out of the home. He is taunted by kids at school, and after literally watching from the other room as his father carelessly tosses his mother a hundred dollar bill before walking out of both of their lives, Chris turns his head to his boom box and puts a tape in, bobbing his head to the music.
Get it? Get it? You see, his life sucks, so he finds an escape in his music. See how that works?
Ok, I just wanted to make sure no one missed that. Mr. Tillman has been a little cryptic with his plot development here. Later, as little Biggie sits on the sidewalk trying to figure out how he can take control of his life, he looks up and sees some gangsters cruising by in their lowriders, nodding at him through a haze of smoke, pressed linen and bling, and you can almost hear something click in Chris’s mind. He has seen the life he wants and he sets out to get it. 
So he turns to his right and sees a local punk kid with gleaming white shoes passing out little baggies, and thus you have the beginnings of Chris’s involvement in drug-dealing and the life-long belief that it’s gold chains and cash that make you a man.
As a presentation of his life, the movie is definitely successful. There is, of course, a permeating sense of routine as we go through the same motions we’ve seen in so many rise-and-fall musical dramas before, but Notorious successfully tells the story of how important Biggie Smalls and other figures (like Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs, Lil’ Kim, and especially Tupac Shakur) were in the formation of modern rap culture.
It should be noted, however, that the movie is produced in large part by two people who have a massive stake in how the story is told – Puffy Combs and Violetta Wallace, Biggie’s mother, both of whom are portrayed in the film. This is probably why the movie has an unmistakable slant, leaving you with an unshakable feeling that there’s a pretty thick sugar-coating over the whole thing.
And besides the sugar-coating, there are also wild inaccuracies obvious to even the uninformed observer. Most notably the polished Hollywood scenes of happiness of philosophical meanderings that impose meaning and depth onto material that probably just didn’t have it. More than anything else, I was curious who would play the role of Tupac (it was Anthony Mackie, who one day might be able to portray Will Smith but who is certainly no Tupac), but I also was interested to know more about the east coast/west coast rivalry that I have always known about but not really in much detail.
Biggie and Puffy doing that thing with their hands.
Unfortunately, for a movie that portrays so many real people, and most of them still alive and well, Notorious has a remarkable ability to show us paper-thin movie caricatures rather than real people. The heavy hand of Mrs. Wallace and Mr. Combs are felt throughout the movie as things are twisted and slanted and bent, some things shown and some things clearly not shown, and most importantly, important and controversial events in his life are glossed over and changed to protect the reputations of those who remain living.
The biggest job that the movie has to take on is to tell the story, as accurately as possible, I should think, of how and why the east/west rivalry began, and what was really the cause of the escalating violence that led to Biggie’s and Tupac’s deaths. Sadly, in this most important task, the movie fails completely.
Generally, in a film made about a musician’s life, I would expect something more than we can get from the media and the person’s lyrics, but all we see in Notorious is a Hollywood-version of a famous story that paints one of the main characters as a burgeoning young artist, ensnared in the violent world of rap music and ultimately driven into a situation of deadly violence all because, the movie would have us believe, of a simple misunderstanding of a single event. Yeah right.
It's not hard to imagine that life at home was probably never quite this happy and sunny...
Sadly, in one last smack in the face from the movie’s creative team, it ends with a moral so unnecessary and so witless that I almost fell out of my chair.
“With his life, he proved that no dream is too big. The sky is the limit.”
The sky is the limit?? Are you serious? I think I ended every book report I wrote between fourth and seventh grades with some variation of that sentence. But in a real movie? Come ON.
But in the movie’s defense, it is packed with solid performances (particularly by the obscure Brooklyn rapper Jamal Woolard – stage name ‘Gravy’ – who played Biggie), and it does cherish the memories of all those involved, living or dead, east coast or west coast. Say what you will about their music, lifestyles, or criminal decisions, but the movie celebrates their lives and mourns their deaths, and that is the highest function of any rockumentary, rapumentary, or hip-hopumentary.
And now, for the first time…
The Bean-Meter!
All Bean really has to say is that he was impressed with the whole thing. He’s kind of a sucker for the whole Hollywood gloss thing, so he wasn’t offended by any factual inadequacies. Also, while he’s quick to point out that the music is not really his style, he still insists that he can “dig it.” Whatever that means. Enjoy!
