BUT, having said all of that, I am still open-minded, and the movie has been getting good reviews from some unexpected quarters (freaking Shakespeare?). By random example, USA Today dug it:

Eminem is a screen natural who has a ways to go before he can claim a body of big-screen work. But in 8 Mile, he does himself proud with a director who's accumulating one.

Coming off the glossily corrosive L.A. Confidential and the whimsical Wonder Boys, Curtis Hanson (news) has fashioned a dynamic Detroit-based saga about showbiz upward mobility — though, to the credit of both movie and filmmaker, not that upward.

As if it weren't tough enough being an aspiring white rapper, Jimmy (Eminem) finds himself living back in a trailer with his mom after having just lost his girlfriend. But because his mom is played by Kim Basinger, she's not just a mom; her new live-in boyfriend (Michael Shannon) is about Jimmy's age. Basinger manages to convince us this woman could pull off the feat, even though she looks as if life long ago wore her out.

...The rap sequences are shot and edited with the excitement of a crisply broadcast sporting event, which in a way they are. Eminem may be a success in real life, but you don't get the sense that anyone here will break out and bankroll mansions or hot cars (though in Detroit, you could probably get a deal). The victories here will be small on the world stage but immense in self-esteem terms.

It means more than the street that marks the northern edge of Detroit. 8 Mile Road divides city from suburb, blacks from whites, lower class from middle class. The east-west artery has been emblematic of the hostility and social ills that beset the city three decades ago — and later cities across the country — and that still linger along pockets of the eight-lane road.

....''I'm going to see (8 Mile) the first day it comes out,'' says Lamar Swanson, 44, who has lived in Detroit since 1968, when the riots set the city afire. ''But not because of that silly white guy; I don't even like that music. I just want to see if someone can make a movie about how life here really is. It hasn't happened yet.''

Along its most crime-ridden stretches, 8 Mile Road remains what it was three decades ago: a catch basin for the city's human flotsam. Detroit's destitute and drug-addled still participate in a grim parade along the south side of the road. To travel north means risking quick attention from some suburban cops who watch the street as if it were a prison fence.
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