Review by Peter Lynn View This Trailer (Note: In an early scene in the trailer for the new Eminem vehicle 8 Mile, love-interest Brittany Murphy asks the rapper, "Are you asking me out on a date, Jimmy Smith Jr?" This is no doubt included in the trailer to establish that this is not a movie about Eminem. This is a movie about Jimmy Smith Jr., a white-boy rapper from the mean streets of Detroit who done made good. So, for obvious reasons, he will be referred to throughout this review as Eminem.) I was pretty psyched about the idea of seeing a trailer for a movie all about Detroit's legendary 8 Mile Road. Growing up in Eastern Ontario watching Detroit TV affiliates (such as the made-up-sounding-but-very-real WXYZ), I was bombarded with commercials advertising the many virtues of the Motor City's suburban wasteland of strip malls and strip clubs. If a 30 second commercial for Highland Appliance's Annual Car & Home Stereo Blowout at the Light Guard Armory out on 8 Mile and Ryan got my heart racing, this commercial for an actual major motion picture about the place had to be pure cinematic dynamite. And the start is promising; the first thing we see is a series of quintessentially Detroitean shots of grimy elevated trains, bombed-out factories and warehouses, and a fade to a back-seat vantage point of these things as seen from an authentic, American-made, gas-guzzling shitheap. Then the trailer cuts to our human protagonist, our generation's answer to Vanilla Ice. Eminem sits slumped in the passenger seat, craning his neck toward the driver without removing his head from his headrest, as though his hooded sweatshirt is stitched right into it. This raises the question: Did the sweater come with the car? Looking over at the driver, he queries, "Ever wonder at what point you gotta stop living up here" -- chopping his hand emphatically first at eye level, then down by his mouth -- "and start living down here?" The natural implication of this scene seems to be that he's tired of seeing the filthy sights of Detroit and wants to go hit White Castle for a bite to eat. But really, what you're left wondering is, when you get in the car, do you have to wriggle into the pullover from the bottom? Does it keep you warm during those cold Michigan winter mornings before the car warms up? Since your head is firmly anchored, do you have to bother wearing the shoulder belt? It's an intriguing idea. It's this kind of ingenuity and good old American know-how that's going to get the moribund U.S. auto industry back on top. But before the viewer can fully ponder all this, the rap music swells and the trailer begins in earnest. Words come up on the screen: "If the streets had a voice, this is the story they would tell." The streets might also tell the stories of The Outsiders, The Wanderers, The Lords of Flatbush, Rumble Fish, Deuces Wild, and even West Side Story, if you let them. Once you get the streets talking about old times, sometimes they just can't stop. In another scene, Eminem's movie MILF Kim Basinger wipes away a tear from his eye, clearly consoling her distraught son after the abandonment of the family by his father, Alec Baldwin. Hold on for a minute -- a tough-guy like Eminem crying? Pretending to be a sissy-boy? And he dyed his hair black for the role? Not only is he our greatest living rapper, but he's also our greatest living actor. I will give him one thing: he does at least appear to be resisting the urge to start trying to score with Kim Basinger, cinematic motherhood be damned. Of course, that's easier when she spends much of her time in the trailer looking boozy, blowsy, and blowing her top, as in one kitchen scene where she screeches at him, "What are you doing with your life that's so great?" (At the time, he appears to be making toast.) At this point, a real teen-angst idol would be clutching at his clothing with an emotionally wrought expression and wailing, "You're tearing me apart!" Eminem merely stares back with an astoundingly believable expression of blankness. Later we do see what he's doing with his life: looking sullen; stalking around determinedly wearing hooded sweatshirts with his posse; impressing Brittany Murphy by taking her to an old abandoned factory for a date; and encircling himself with a crowd of black people, ridiculing one of their number for his poverty in freestyle verse. We also see scenes of Eminem living in a trailer home, working in an auto shop, and getting the crap kicked out of him by a gang of thugs while his daughter looks on, crying hysterically. In a perfect world we could enjoy these impoverished, depressing scenes for what they are: Eminem getting the well-deserved crap knocked out of him, while the world applauds. But we know how the movie's going to turn out. He's going to get rich and famous and hailed as a genius, instead of consistently beaten up until his death years in the future. You can't really enjoy watching him suffer, because you know his martyrdom is going to lead to canonization. It's nice to see Brittany Murphy -- known for voicing the white trash bimbo Luanne on King of the Hill -- showing her range as a non-animated actress by playing a white-trash bimbo in three full dimensions. But Eminem playing himself is no more a stretch than Howard Stern playing himself in Private Parts or Courtney Love playing a crack whore in The People vs. Larry Flynt. Sure, it's authentic, but doesn't take any talent at all. It's hardly Robert De Niro gaining sixty pounds to play boxer Jake LaMotta -- unless you want to claim Eminem undertook an entire career as a rapper purely as research for this role. If you really want to see an enjoyable and truthful chronicle of the life and career of Eminem, wait a couple of years and Behind The Music should have a hilarious retrospective of his upcoming career flameout. Until then, this is just Cool As Ice for a new generation, judging from the trailer. Be eight miles from any theater playing this movie. RATING: