All Eyez on Me Review: Not great but far from horrible
- Andy Ayala
- Jun 20, 2017
- 5 min read
Ima just jump right in, All Eyez on Me Sucks!!!.... Just playing. I wanted your attention. Look, I came in to this movie with low expectations and my expectations got even lower when I seen it said "Code Black" in the beginning of the movie... So I'm like oh boy here we go. This is not a great movie, but it's not as bad as people make it out to be. I don't think the director and crew disrespected Tupac for making this movie because I think he legitimately tried. The problems I have with this movie is acting, story, and tone. I'll go in to detail breaking down each point.
The first thing I'm going to pick apart on this movie is characters. I think the makers of the movie focused on trying to find actors who looked like the people they're playing rather then actors who portrayed the character perfectly and lacked the looks a bit (like Eazy-E actor in Straight Outta Compton. He was great), because the acting was not good in All Eyez on Me. Danai Gurira just may have been the best actress in this movie, portraying Afeni Shakur. The problem with her is though that she cant give her all because when she's in a scene with a character, that character doesn't bring it. I have a lot of problems with Demetrius Shipp Jr., this man in fact looks like 2pac. There would be scenes where he come in the room and I'm like "oh snap, Pac!" then he'll speak and I'll be like "oh never mind". He uses actual Tupac speeches in the film but its almost as if they had no impact on us as viewers. You just don't feel it the same way you would've felt it if Pac said it. Look kill me if you want, but the guy that played Biggie, played a better Biggie then the guy that played Pac. I always thought this guy played a good biggie. Suge was okay, I'm just tired of people playing Suge. Another great performance is Clifton Powell, (who shows up in all those Code Black movies) his role is brief but his acting was excellent in my opinion. Now let's talk about the beautiful Bonnie (from Vampire Diaries) as Jada Pinkett... Honestly I think she played a great Jada, but again Kat Graham delivers but Demetrius Shipp Jr. just cant deliver back and it makes the scene dry. There's also a guy in there who does a great impersonation of Snoop Dogg but I honestly think Snoop did the voice over.
The most important thing in this movie that bugged me was the way the story was told, it seems rushed. The formula of the film is Tupac is in prison being interviewed and takes us back to his early life prior to being locked up. Which is cool, if they did it right.... But they didn't, it all happened so quickly. In my opinion I think Afeni should've had an entire first act to herself, her role is so important but so small. The movie does bring up and show us important parts of his life but doesn't stay on screen long enough for us to care or get to know him (you have to already be a 2pac fan to get the movie) it wont teach newcomers anything. For example, that women Leila Steinberg played a big part of Tupac's life but she only shows up for a couple seconds. Watch Thug Angel: Life of an Outlaw if you want to see how large of a role she played in his life. It also does a bad job of showing how him moving out of Baltimore to the west coast effected him, because he was doing so well in school. Yeah it comes up but again we don't care, because it seems like the actor playing Pac doesn't care. Like i said all these life milestones are rushed until the point where he gets out of jail and signs to Death Row, then the movie slows down... They should've just started the movie there. That's that Pac everybody knows, they should've made it about who Pac was outside the whole rap thing. The Pac and Biggie thing was a huge part of Tupac's career and even though we're tired of hearing it, it should've had a bigger role in the movie. I wanted to see them actually meet, when we meet Biggie in the film he already knows Pac (Even Notorious showed them introducing themselves to each other). And why did they skip the entire Me Against the World Era? I understand you cant fit his entire life into a movie but Pac was more then just a rapper. They made it almost exclusively about his rap career and rise to fame. It really should've been 2 parts... I would've settled for a miniseries. But I'm not mad at the movie or director because I can see he actually tried to fit as much of his life on there as possible even if he had to just mention it. They spent so much time on other things the film had no time to show us the impact Shakur's death had on the world.
Lastly I'm gonna talk about the tone of the film. It feels like a VH1 made for TV movie, and it seems like one big music video. This film has a lot of music, a lot of the scenes are him in the studio or him performing, they could've shorten those scenes and made room for important stuff or even a better ending. A lot of the Studio scenes are too long and there's too much of them, we understand Pac was busy but there's a different way of telling us and showing us. for example, The Digital Underground stuff in the movie is perfect it shows people sleeping in the studio while Pac is on like his 50 something take on a song and he starts yelling at the engineer saying it doesn't sound right. And at one point i thought i was watching a Tupac live in concert DVD, he did like 4 songs one after another, those scenes would be cool if they had a montage to go with the music. When Straight Outta Compton had scenes like that, for instance Ice Cube recording No Vaseline, it cut to reactions of group members and people on the street reacting to the song. I understand its a biographical film about a musician but make me feel something about the person its about, even Selina made me feel something, even Straight Outta Compton made feel something. Make us feel something.
Now the Verdict is I don't hate the movie, its cool to watch if you want to hear some dope Pac songs and or him in the studio, as a Pac fan I know enough about him for it not to bug me that they left things out because I already know what they are. I just wont recommend the movie to any newcomers, to those who want to learn about 2pac and what he did go watch Tupac Resurrection. Like I said I don't think its an incredibly horrible film, I enjoyed it, it just upsets me that non-rap or non-Tupac fans wont get his entire story when going into this movie, they'll just think he was a thug....But as a fan it's your duty to watch this movie, like I said its not disrespectful. I can see everybody tried really hard on this movie and that might be the problem, they tried too hard probably.
-Andy Capitator
Comments