The Notorious B.I.G. biopic Notorious hits theaters nationwide today starring Jamal Woolard, Angela Bassett, Antonique Smith, Naturi Naughton, Derek Luke, and more. Find out how the larger-than-life film weighs in with the critics.
Uptown Notes: I could document the many issues with this movie, like the way Biggie’s cadence was off, how lyrics were flubbed, but that ain’t even the point. I’d rather just tell you what I never felt. I really, really, really wanted to get pulled back to that golden age in my mind of Hip-Hop. I wanted to hear a beat drop and have my head compulsively nod and remember what it felt like to lug around timbs in the cold, to floss in sun, or to consider the value of my life. These were the things Biggie meant to me and the movie captured NONE of that. As a fan of the man and the music, this movie fell short for start to finish.
DrJays.com: Notorious is a must-see movie for any fan of hip-hop music and culture.
Entertainment Weekly: Notorious is a luridly unapologetic trip through the violence, hunger, verbal bravado, and money fever of the hip-hop world, which it views as both liberating and destructive. … Notorious sticks close to the details, and the hell-bent spirit, of Biggie’s life.
The New York Times: So Notorious settles into a curious comfort zone; it’s half pop fable, half naturalistic docudrama. Not a bad movie, but nowhere near as strong as its soundtrack.
USA Today: While Notorious is well-made, it mythologizes someone who treated people, particularly women, with disrespect and whose life and art glamorized drug use, promiscuity and violence. It seems an odd choice of film to open just days before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
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