We all know the story of rapper Tupac Shakur. He was one of the biggest hip-hop artists of the 90s. It was weird that for so long, nobody has ever attempted to do a biopic about him. Honestly, how could you pull off a Tupac biopic if you didn't have somebody whose face was similar like Tupac's? He was one of those rappers with a distinct face. Believe it or not, a perfect guy whose face eerily looks like Tupac was found. Now he has an entire movie all to himself and wow did they fuck that up.
I can just imagine how this movie got into production. I can imagine the situation where a studio producer went to a meeting and said,
"Hey, we got a guy who looks like Tupac."
And then the studio head would go, "Can he act?"
"No."
"Do you have a script?"
"No."
"Excuse me?"
"No no no we have a script. I mean we printed out Tupac's Wikipedia page, so that's something."
"Fine. Here's $45 million. Go have fun."
If there were ever a disjointed BET R-rated movie, it would be this. This film is a collection of montages that never seems to connect to anything. It is like a 6th grader wrote this script and had no experience of screenwriting at all.
One of the most important words you'll hear about this film is how its disjointed. Let me tell you an example of how this film is so disjointed. You know all the hard-hitting moments in Straight Outta Compton? Well, let's have a biopic with nothing but those moments.
The entire film has no connecting scenes that you can never immerse yourself into whatever is going on. Watching this movie is like talking to a hardcore Tupac fan who can never fully explain who he was besides "the best rapper of all time." It's like talking to a guy who goes, "MAAAAN TUPAC WAS THE DOPEST RAPPER EVER," then proceeds explaining everything he did without describing who he was.
THIS MOVIE IS SO CHEAP THAT:
1) Every time there was a performance scene, EVERYONE PERFORMS ON THE SAME EXACT STAGE! You see that same stage in every scene where someone performs. You actually see the same exact locations throughout the entire film.
2) It can't even get its casting right. Outside of Tupac and Biggie, none of the actors who are playing these rappers don't even look like who they're supposed to be. When someone in the film goes, "Oh hey Dr. Dre" or "Hey Suge Knight," you're expected to believe they are this rapper when they look nothing like him. By the time the guy who's supposed to be Snoop Dogg comes in, you just give up, especially when SNOOP DOGG dubs all of his lines!
3) IIt doesn't attempt to age Tupac well in the regards of casting. You see him go from being a kid to a teenager, but instead of him being played by an actual adolescent, you have him just turn into his adult actor, Demetrius Shipp Jr.
People argue to this day who was the better rapper of the 90s Tupac or Biggie. I don't know about all that, but I can tell you who has the better biopic. In this, his delivery is only on Rottweiler mode from beginning to end.
FULL REVIEW HERE
