Straight Outta Compton Review

My husband and I went yesterday. Mark is an extremely harsh movie rating grader -- he reserves four stars for best of all time top ten of all time kinds of films. He gives Straight Outta Compton 2 1/2 stars, which is solid for him. He really enjoyed it. I'd rate it higher.

Mark thought it meandered a bit in the middle of the picture, but thought the casting was fantastic. We both couldn't get over Ice Cube's son's performance. All the performances were very good, but he was a standout.

We also agree that if you produce a film, you can make sure that you are portrayed as a saint. Except for the one scene where Ice Cube trashes the label exec's office, he and Dr. Dre come off as near saints while all the crazy violence happens around them. And forget the Bechdel test -- there are barely any women with actual LINES in this film. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a male-centric movie in my life. (Just how many topless women can you fit in a pool party scene? SOC aims to find out!) Mark pointed out that the only two completely rational people in the movie, though, are Dr. Dre's mother, and Eazy E's wife.

I liked that it wasn't the usual narrative progression of musician biopics that we always see. Mark wasn't into rap and hip hop at the time NWA came on the scene, he got into them later after Eminem. I know next to nothing about it, and was only peripherally aware of some of what they talk about in the film -- the Fuck the Police controversy and so on. I thought where the director excelled was in picking news clips that perfectly captured the zietgiest of white people at that time -- Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings befuddlement at why these black kids would write a song like that! The director really showed why, and it's so timely, too.

It's a flawed film, but a must see.