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In my opinion, “All Eyez on Me” is one of the most pointless music biopics ever made, as it will be too confusing for first-time viewers and too underwhelming for those who are already familiar with the work and life of rap prophet Tupac Shakur. All Eyez on Me,” directed by Benny Boom with only the tiniest spark and condensed into an unforgiving 140 minutes, is a biopic that relies on the bare minimum of biographical requirements, boasting a lead who looks strikingly similar to Tupac but nothing that can’t be learned from a Wikipedia page or better yet, the 2003 documentary “Tupac: Resurrection.” “All Eyez on Me” dehumanizes an important man because it merely seeks to canonize a complex figure who was far more interesting than perfection, as opposed to perfection.
The story of Tupac Shakur’s 25 years on Earth is filled with fascinating details: his upbringing in a family of Black Panthers and mostly women; his early interest in acting and Shakespeare; his rise to fame as a no-holds-barred storyteller; and, of course, the debate over the merits of his obscene lyrics, particularly in regards to treatment of women and animosity toward the police. When it comes to these (aside from anything that makes Tupac look bad), Boom’s film overzealously hits them all and compiles them like a greatest hits collection that only includes the simple choruses and never the contemplative verses. Throughout the film, cliches are flattened, diced, and spoken, such as when Tupac defends his teen pregnancy song “Brenda’s Got a Baby” to a couple of white record executives, or when he later realizes that because the world is watching him closely, he should name his album… well, you get the picture. As the editing jumps from one Important Moment to the next, the timeline becomes jumbled, and emotions that are bold-faced and underlined never seem to resonate with the audience.
A breath of fresh air in this film—the kind of breath that transforms the faces on the big screen into our thoughtful surrogates, regardless of whether the character is fictional or not—is lacking. Demetrius Shipp Jr.’s passionate portrayal of Tupac Shakur is reduced to a clumsy impersonation, and an important aspect of the rapper’s personality is overlooked: his mind. This version of Tupac is always doing something in service of presenting everything he did, but not so much in service of presenting what was going on inside of him. He is rarely shown simply thinking, considering, or deliberating, with the exception of hammy moments in which he surveys a concert crowd with a bright spotlight on him. In spite of the fact that the narrative framing device of an interview in prison generates exposition in the form of Tupac debating himself with his interviewee, it is concise and inexpensive.
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It’s possible that the third act of “All Eyez on Me” is the film’s most successful element, in which Tupac joins Death Row Records and signs a deal with the devilish Suge Knight (Dominic L. Santana). While drawing heavily on the “Julius Caesar”-esque elements of Tupac’s final months, it functions more like a cheesy gangster film, complete with glares and heated confrontations. The film is still taunting us, as when we are forced to watch Shipp lip sync to Tupac songs for a good ten minutes during a concert or when we are forced to watch numerous macho confrontations play out with the camerawork of a soap opera, which is not uncommon in Boom’s films.
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Despite the fact that the film is completely devoid of nuance, there is a sliver of an emotional arc that emerges from Tupac’s relationship with his mother, Afeni Shakur, during the course of the film (Danai Gurira). Through the course of the film, she is depicted as a force that opposes Tupac in one way or another. In addition to stale dialogue and cliche situations, Gurira is the one ray of hope that feels like a genuine expression rather than a duplication of the previous performance.
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Tupac’s biopic is more concerned with information than with humanity, and Boom’s shallow dedication to showing us recognizable moments or outfits eventually becomes plainly obtuse and ridiculous. I was particularly taken with the actor who played Snoop Dogg and then lip-synced his dialogue with that of the real Snoop’s voice in the film (or it sounded very much like it). When it comes to the soundtrack, there are more giggles than head bobs, as the film crams in as many songs as it possibly can, despite having no problem skipping around a short career timeline from album to album and underestimating the creation of such pivotal songs in the process.
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Boom’s counterproductive response to Tupac’s flaws is to deny that very complexity and to elevate him to the status of a savior, which frequently results in “All Eyez on Me” being nothing more than a dreadful piece of work. The film’s refusal to acknowledge the ambiguity of a controversial sexual assault case—including the before, during, and after—within the context of a biopic’s fact, in which the survivor is shown intimately dancing with Tupac to R. Kelly’s “Bump & Grind” the night before, and Tupac is presented as sleeping in a different room when she was gang-raped by men he claimed to have barely known. Even after Tupac’s sentence is announced, Boom has the audacity to claim to speak for the woman when he cuts to her celebrating with her lawyer and then smirking at Tupac. The juxtaposition of this with the film’s walking butt close-up establishing shots and the fact that women are clearly either mother figures or sexual objects is enough to make you want to vomit.
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It’s clear from their narrative agenda and values that they’re looking far beyond what makes Tupac so important, despite whatever Boom and his collaborators may know about Tupac, especially as they present “the untold story” (to use a marketing term). As a young black male artist making history with a bold definition of Thug Life and a fiery ego that clashed with his self-proclaimed sensitivity, this man’s life deserves to be scrutinized in order to explore the many issues he faced as a young black male artist. Even more, Tupac’s story is one that deserves to be told with true artistry. To be successful, a Tupac film must match the ferocity with which you experience his freight train rapping, which did more than just tell you what to think. It provided you with the opportunity to see his world for yourself.
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