Notorius
Grade B Review by Bruce Banter
Notorious” is a good film in many ways, but its best achievements are showing how the media fueled this bogus east coast vs west coast feud and the propaganda of Biggie. I mean this was a brilliant move by P-Diddy to take over the life of Christopher Wallace and work with Violetta Wallace and ex-wife Faith Evans to depict Big’s life and story as they want it to be told. In this way Faith never slept with Pac and Ms.Wallace was ignorant to all evil that Big did. Even if its not all true, it’s the proper message to send to mothers in the audience with children on the way to becoming wayward rappers. The focus on the gentler Mr. Wallace and the more subtle problem of his philosophy was handled masterfully. After watching this film you would think that Biggie played a very miniscule role in being a provocateur of his beef with Tupac Shakur and all of the details of things that really went on which were factual no longer seem to matter.
So many details that could be deemed significant were left out of the 2 hours but if I am Sean Combs and Violetta Wallace, I would play it the same way and smile all the way to the bank. For the typical rap fans that don’t pay much attention to Hip Hop History no real red flags are raised. Afterall even some astute rap journalist fell for Chuck Phillips lies. Although I assume almost everybody was annoyed with the poor casting of Marc John Jefferies as Lil’ Cease. Yes Big’s girlfriend Charlie Baltimore and his paramour Lil Kim are very upset at the film but if you are not close to this story as they are, you will enjoy it despite its flaws.
Besides there are some great casting decision like Antonique Smith as Faith Evans and great performances like Naturi Naughton as Lil Kim (forget what Lil Kim says this girl reps her accurately lol) and last but not least the casting of Jamal Woolard, a rapper named Gravy, in the title role. He comes off uncannily like Christopher Wallace aka Biggie Smalls. The voice lessons he took six months at Juilliard to master B.I.G.’s sound paid off.
On thing that hit me in more strikingly in this film although never addressed is Biggies participation in Kim’s current pathology of inferiority stemming from his own feelings of not being good enough.” You too fat, too black and too ugly,” a girl tells him. He just looks at her. WHY ..cause he believes it. If we are to believe the film – Kim was always bypassed for a much lighter female with dyed hair color like Charlie Baltimore and Faith Evans.
In turn every time we see Lil Kim self destructing she was rocking red wigs (Charlie Baltimore) and blonde wigs (faith Evans) and getting lighter and lighter even being dissed by Biggie Mom who was quoted as saying “”Kim felt the character we chose for her was ‘too dark’. Do you know why the character was too dark for her? Because she’s a white woman trapped in a black woman’s body, and you can tell the world I said it, because those are Lil’ Kim’s words. Tell Lil’ Kim to go find herself”. Biggie loved very light girls cause he felt his blackness was ugly which is obvious from his lyrics but its effect on Kim is something I wish we could honestly explore one day.
This film only receives an r rating because of its raw sex scenes outside of that there isn’t much to tell us why anybody would give him the Moniker as Notorius. Biggie Smalls came from “Uptown Saturday Night.” A Bill Cosby film. Calvin Lockhart plays Biggie Smalls. Then there was another rapper called Biggie Smalls, so they couldn’t really use that. So, he wanted to call himself Notorious, Notorious B.I.G. –ck it out if you not a hip hop purist you will enjoy it and if you are there is still the soundtrack-. Nuff said
