Notorious (Three-Disc Edition) – DVD Review

By Lane Law Apr 22, 2009, 15:56 GMT

I could never pretend to have been a lifelong hip-hop fan or anything but I do remember the deaths of Tupac and Biggie. Pac I had heard of - Biggie I hadn't. I was in high school and reasonably intrigued but not enough to do any reading on the subject. 

My best friend talked about these guys like they were Elvis, John Lennon, James Dean and Ghandi put together. Still, interesting but not getting me to turn off an episode of M*A*S*H I've seen a hundred times. Not back then anyways. Recently I've become more interested in rap. I'll never be a fanatic but some of it is a lot of fun.

 
When I heard about "Notorious", a biopic of murdered Eastside rap icon Christopher 'Biggie Smalls' Wallace, it caught my eye a little more readily than it would have a few years back. Listen, I love Johnny Cash, but James Mangold's retarded biography of him is a waste of time. The man's an immortal whose music will perpetually change the world and be rediscovered by generation after generation. 

But the story of a farm kid growing up and writing songs and getting married does not make a movie. A drug dealer from the ghetto who grows up to take over the world with his music - that's a little more appealing. So, I wanted this movie to be good - to be informative - to show me why Biggie Smalls was The Man.
 
Sadly, this would not be the case.
 
I watched this whole movie that supposedly covered Chris Wallace's whole timeline from childhood to death - and I'm still wondering what in the hell ever went on in his life. It seemed like there was probably tons of interesting tidbits - too bad we never got to see them. The movie just blows past everything.  Even the events that are being fast-forwarded to are easily missed if one blinks.
 
It starts out as this kinda K-Mart version of "Goodfellas" ("K-Mart" meaning they obviously couldn't afford film stock - or writing). It even has a narration by the Biggie character that manages to be both silly and useless at once. If you're wondering how he got into the drug game, you better pay close attention or it'll be gone like that. 

If you wanna hear how his mom's breast cancer scare affected him you don't have to devote any more than 3.2 seconds to finding out. After being caught committing
adultery, he had to have set some record when he won his wife's forgiveness in under 27 seconds flat.

 
You keep thinking the pace will plateau and maybe we can learn some crap about this person but no. It moves like this til the credits roll.
 
The dialogue generally feels like material deemed too cheesy for "One Tree Hill". I thought I'd seen ridiculous until I saw the scene where a guardian angel drug dealer takes the heat for Biggie on a weapons possession charge so Biggie can pursue his rap aspirations.
 
I don't know much about Puff Daddy - he actually does seem to me like he's probably a pretty damn good producer - but I know he's generally not thought of as one of the good guys in the Biggie Smalls narrative. 

In this movie, however, he's Obi Wan Kenobi, always there by Biggie's side with a ready bit of Urban Wisdom - or the music and editing lead you to believe that someone somewhere thinks its wisdom - if you listen it's actually pretty not at all valuable to anyone in any walk of life.  I wondered what was up with this - and then the credits showed: Executive Producer - Sean Combs. Wow.
 
The shining moments within the movie itself centered on Nature Naught on as Lila Kim.  She was pure dynamite doing the musical sequences - I'll be keeping an eye out for her in years to come.
 
The movie seems to exist simply to tell us what happened to Biggie at certain points without ever even making an attempt to tell us who he was.

 
The special features on this two-disc set are my favorite part. It's far more enjoyable to watch actual old Biggie concert footage or hear people talk about Biggie than watch the crap movie.
 
Notorious (Three-Disc Edition) is now available at Amazon. It is available for pre-order at AmazonUK for a June 22nd release. Visit the DVD database for more information.