So what do we have here then? A public information film? Ahead of the Anger Management Tour pistol-whipping the UK in the autumn, no doubt amid a hail of predictable controversy, the Mary Whitehouses amongst us get a chance to draft their complaints. Look, a hoody! Suburban white kids waving their arms in hypnotic unison! Chanting obscenities on order! A man constantly changing his oversized t-shirts and booming “Detroyyyyiiiit!”. So, truth is, there’s little to get upset by here, surprisingly little. How can you take offence to scripted anarchy anyway? And besides, the obedience displayed by the audience is the sort of thing rich American parents crave, spending hundreds of dollars sending their unruly swine to the desert for the summer with ex-army generals and the like. Ironic, huh. But that’s a discussion for another time.
So this is a film of Eminem’s Detroit homecoming gig on the aforementioned tour. It’s a polished production to say the least, a factory-line product, it’s probably got its own GDP. The stage, in circus show set up, even has its own blinkin’ full size Ferris wheel, which Mr Shady arrives on to the large lumpen strains of ‘Square Dance’. But again, if a man was on course to subvert the nation’s youth, would he not at least have a ghost train or something? It is, to begin with at least, hard to see this as anything other than big budget choreography, lost in an oversized hanger. ‘Business’ and ‘White America’ move by without surprises or peaks and its difficult to work out whether the boy Marshall is actually miming. The potential of the stage, the arena and the medium seems perennially wasted.
But much as we could poke fun at the hungry-obese-kid-in-a-sweet-shop inanity of D12, it is they who slap the party spirit wide awake here, stomping on for a rabble rousing ‘When The Music Stops’ and staying to reprise ‘Pimp Like Me’, ‘Fight Music’ and ‘Purple Pills’. Certainly not the best tunes in Eminem’s canon, but for spirit alone they climb the table. With the main man now conscious, ‘The Way I Am’ and ‘Soldier showcase the extremes of his punchy technique, also aided by the growing entourage doing their turn. The gains he makes are soured slightly by the inclusion of ‘Superman’, his most shameful, sexist, meat-headed bout of testosterone, underlined by poor humour in the form of onstage cameos from a bunch of ‘sideshow freaks’. But that’s just desperate and should be ignored, at least in the end he proves he can give performance.
The extras aren’t up to much, mind.
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