Before Jay-Z crowned himself King of New York, The Notorious B.I.G. was the one who held the title for some years. His unique flow and his skill in creating songs for both the radio and hardcore fans earned him his popularity. Kick in the Door is still one of my favorite songs ever, Biggie and DJ Premier on one track equals magic.
Notorious tells Christopher Wallace life story, how he grew up in Brooklyn and how he died in California
Biggie had a turbulent life. Before he started making music he was dealing drugs. He almost landed up in prison for many years. A couple of years ago i saw a documentary about Biggie on MTV, in which his friends told his life story. Almost everything from this documentary was used for the movie and not a lot of new things were added. His friendship and subsequent beef with 2Pac or the “east coast-west coast war” are shown only very shortly. I expect that the reason for this might be dat Sean Combs (P.Diddy) was doing executive producer duties on the movie and that the people who were close to Biggie helped in making it. The result is a movie where the negative side of his persona is not shown a lot, which in my opinion gives a one-sided view of him. Some facts are actually left out (for example his relationship with Charli Baltimore). At the end of the movie he is almost shown as being an angel as he only wants to do good. It really did not feel realistic. Biggie was a great rapper when he was behind a mic, but his private life was something different.
Jamal Woolard tries to act like the Notorious B.I.G., but disappoints. To me the most important thing in a documentary about a music artist are the performances. They must capture the feeling of that artist so that even if someone does not know the person will understand why he/she was so popular.
When you watch movies like Ray, Walk the Line (of even the recent Crazy Heart) the performances are extremely well done. You really feel that there’s an actual performer on stage. I did not get the feeling when watching Notorious.
The performances just seem to be a necessary part after which it’s possible to quickly return to telling the story. They should have been the main focus.
It just does not feel the same if you compare it to something like this (from the The Show (1995)):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1K4CnTmkTY]
The rest of the cast does not convince either. The only exceptions are Angela Bassett as his mother (Voletta Wallace), who manages to emulate her way of talking perfectly. The other exception is Naturi Naughton as Lil’Kim, she really knows how to act like Lil’Kim, convincingly expressing her explicit sexual nature.
If you want to see the movie to get a better insight into his life, you will not see a lot of new information. If you don’t know anything about Biggie then this movie probably will not be interesting enough to keep you interested. The best advice I can give is just to buy his music, because in the end that’s the reason why he is so well-known. He managed to make some timeless songs.
Score: 5