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Straight Outta Compton


It's no secret that I have been less than impressed with the movie offerings this year. There have been a quantifiable number of good movies to come out in 2015, but that number is really small, and gets worse when you compare it to how good 2014 was. I was beginning to lose some faith in myself. Am I just too cynical to enjoy films now? I was worried that my passion for movies was gone. I thought it had left. I thought it was stompin. But when it came back, boy, it came


Straight Outta Compton:


I will quickly talk about the negatives in this opener, so that I can spend the next thousand words in love. This movie is 150 minutes long, and it really didn't have to be 150 minutes long. It felt like the rap Avengers in some ways, full of 90s rapper cameos in scenes that served no real purpose other than to say "Tupac is in our movie!", complete with a sort of post credits scene of Eminem (who allegedly was played by Ansel Elgort in a scene that got cut from the movie) and 50 Cent talking about their relationship with Dr. Dre. I would not be surprised in the least if some kind of Tupac or Snoop Dogg biopics were rushed out by Universal as spinoffs. They also do sugercoat the main characters as most biopics of living people do, although to be fair they don't do the opposite to the bad guys. Suge Knight is probably toned down from his cartoonishly evil real self (He got arrested for a hit and run when he injured 2 people with his truck violating his restraining order to meet the crew. Seriously.), and the record manager played by Paul Giamatti isn't as much a villain as he is selfish. His character basically boils down to "I warned you guys that you shouldn't have irresponsibly blown all of your money. The music industry is evil, and I need to lookout for myself as much as you guys", which I think is a pretty agreeable statement. It might sound hypocritical in light of my recent review of the similar Love and Mercy, where I took points off for those things, but at a certain point you have to say that you had so much fun that the things you wish were different don't matter as much as what is actually there.

And what is actually there is absolutely glorious. This movie is so much fun, so much so that I'll say it twice. This movie is so much fun. The actors all have such fantastic chemistry. You feel like you're in a recording studio, waving your arms and singing along with this group of likable and charismatic people around you. There is just so much energy with this movie that I wish I got one of those screenings from the opening day where the audience was singing along. You feel like part of the crowd during their eventful Detroit concert, where everybody is so into **** The Police that the government has to take action. You feel sad enough to cry tears along with the members as they go through a tragic loss. 4 of the members of NWA are played by mostly unknown young actors, while Ice Cube is played by his son. The best of the bunch is Jason Mitchell as E, who probably won't get any kind of Oscar buzz but should take full advantage of the musical/comedy Golden Globe separation. Giamatti is fantastic in his role, too, but E is kind of the main character of the movie in the sense that the plot starts and ends with him. Dre is the emotional core, and he is portrayed excellently by Corey Hawkins. Ice Cube's son gets a role that seems written around him, with fewer dramatic moments than the 3 actors noted above and more scenes rapping, playing to his strengths of looking and sounding like the man he's playing. MC Ren and DJ Yella get demoted to the background, which might bother you if you're a fan of either of them, but as I said the movie is long enough as is and there are 3 members that are pretty clearly more popular than the other 2.

The story is fascinating and fun to follow. Living in the Los Angeles suburb on Compton, where the only career options are dead end office jobs, selling drugs, and running gangs, five talented individuals get together and help Easy-E (the only man with a decent amount of money) make a hit record. This gives them the attention of Giamatti, who forwards them to a label, and they create their debut album. This only covers the first act, essentially the origin story of NWA. They go on tour and proceed to Forrest Gump their way through history, giving a voice to a group of young and poor black people who had none. They wind in the history very well, as events like the Rodney King trial effect their outlook on the world and their music. The band breaks up, going their separate ways, and the three leads all try to do their own thing. I was surprised at the emotional weight carried by this movie. Most true story movies build to one climatic event, but Straight Outta Compton has two: one in the middle, the climax of the NWA period, and one at the end, the climax of the breakup period. They both work fantastically. They both make you sad while giving hope for the future, the first making you want to see more and the second giving nice closure to the film.

The music is amazing. I'm not an especially big NWA fan, but the music feels so lively and tight, and everybody in the cast is great at rapping, even the cameos. Snoop Dogg and Tupac both steal the show by delivering a nearly perfect recreation of one of their most notable songs, with a bouncier and livelier feel. As already mentioned, the concert scenes are great. They work so well because they're immersive. Like the whole movie, the rapping is enjoyable and energized. It shows the hard studio work, with Dre trying different production styles and E needing multiple takes to get into his best form, but it never forgets just how enjoyable it can be when they're spitting over a funk beat.

The script is also wonderful. I was surprised at just how funny it was. Most of the jokes are just simple banter between the band members, but they're obviously all witty lyricists so things are kept light and fun. Fans of Ice Cube's hit movie Friday will be thrilled to know that the origin of the "Bye, Felicia" line is revealed to the public in hilarious fashion. The themes addressed are important and immortal. Like Do The Right Thing, my second favorite movie ever, the direction and music give the movie an obvious late 1980s style, but the concepts it touches on are just as relevant today as they were back then. The idea that a bunch of street thugs can be seen as artists with some new-age rap that shouldn't even count as art provokes police to harass NWA at every moment possible, only being stopped by the presence of a white manager, and in one of the film's most powerful moments, not being stopped in spite of their manager. I was expecting those scenes to be preachy and blunt, because viewed out of context on Jimmy Fallon they were, but they handle it really well. I also appreciate the mixed races of the cops. It would be so easy to just paint it as the black heroes rebelling against the evil white society, but like Do The Right Thing people of both races are on both sides, which is pretty much necessary to turn a good racial message into a great one.

People commonly talk about summer movies being fun and awards movies being good as if they're mutually exclusive, and while sometimes they are, they don't have to be. Straight Outta Compton proves that stellar cinema can also be the most fun time had with friends at a movie theater. I know the complaints against it are that it's sanitized and the second half gets sappy, and I also know that a large portion of this forum is made up of middle aged white people who may hate hip hop. I'd like to think that those things will cancel each other out, and that the flaws are there to make it appeal to people who hate rap music. This is one of the biggest breakout hits of the year for good reason, and it's easily worth your 10 dollars and 2.5 hours.