Review of All Eyez on Me (2017) by Dottheeyes — 16 Jun 2017

The celebrated, contradictory, fast-paced, and short life of a hip-hop firebrand is sadly turned here into a pedestrian, unadventurous biopic. Among similar fare, it falls incredibly short of not just Straight Outta Compton, a close-to-perfect and highly crowd-pleasing blend of cinematic flair and social commentary, but even the modestly entertaining and largely respectful Notorious.

It is not a film of grievous sins so much as it is simply a boring one. Excepting a trite prison-interview framing device, it starts at the beginning of its subject's life and moves in a dutiful way from event to event to event, the cinematic equivalent of a Wikipedia article.

Characters often converse in platitudes or as if they are aware they are in a biopic of an iconic figure. "I'm going to be a revolutionary!" chirps child 2Pac. He is shown hesitating multiple times before leaving the hotel the night of his murder in Las Vegas in one of those artificial moments meant to evoke calls of, "No! Turn around! Stop!" among the audience.

Extensive lip service is paid to police brutality, poverty, and whether 2Pac can be a positive influence even while frequently embracing a hyper-masculine outlaw archetype, but the film's portrayal of urban life in the 1980s and '90s is unconvincing; it feels cheaply produced on a sound-stage and out-of-touch with reality in any visceral or tactile sense of the word.

And I am honestly not sure how well it serves its subject in regard to either flattery or constructive criticism and reflection; Demetrius Shipp Jr. resembles 2Pac, but he does not deliver a particularly charismatic or dynamic performance.

And the film is curiously disinterested in his actual music (songwriting, life on the road, designing cover art and music videos); it favors the fame created by the art to the art itself and almost plays as the story of a well-known young man who spent money, fought, had sex, went to prison, had more sex, fought again, and died abruptly.

..and every now and then dropped into a studio to rapidly, effortlessly record a verse, no big deal. There are a few other, rather predictable sour spots, too: the female characters can be sorted into the Matriarch, the Angelic Love Interest, and bit**** to be ogled by the camera (this is particularly uncomfortable during the film's hyper-sympathetic dramatization of a rape case).

Oh, and there is a fair bit of bad lip-syncing.