Tupac Shakur has risen from the dead to glamorize his life yet again with a documentary entitled, “Tupac: Resurrection.” The documentary, produced by his mother, Afeni Shakur, puts the controversial rapper’s life story in his own words through a collaboration of interviews, clips and random sound bites. The movie is meant to give the perspective that Tupac fans have always wanted: his own. In reality, all they get is a two-hour VH1 “Behind the Music” that costs eight bucks.
Contrary to a “Behind the Music” episode, the movie is told in Tupac’s words, but what more does he have to say than the guy with the cool voice on VH1? The film begins with the rapper’s youth, growing up with a mother who was a Black Panther activist and who did not have enough time to care for her son. The story then leads to his experiences in many different cities and many different housing projects.
One interesting fact about this gangsta rapper is that he attended a school for the performing arts in Baltimore. Here, however, he did not seem to be struggling with anything other than the fact that he had to wear tights in ballet class. So the now-old story goes, as many have heard before, his mother falls victim to crack, and Tupac becomes intrigued with the thug lifestyle that seems to be all around him. Cue: the Tabitha Sorin interview from 1994.
The remainder of the documentary is focused on an MTV interview with Tupac conducted by Tabitha Sorin. Deja vous, anyone? This is when it really hits home that eight dollars have been lost and will never come back. Conjuring up no new opinions and no original thoughts, the film is merely a compilation of what everyone who has followed Tupac or even been acquainted with his story already knows. But what new information can be uncovered by a person who has been dead for seven years and has produced an album every year since?
The most disturbing part of the film, directed by Lauren Lazin of MTV accolades, tends to restrict the amount of information given about the controversy in Tupac’s life. For instance, the motivation for his murder and all the details of the relationships he had with Notorious B.I.G. and P. Diddy seem hidden. These are the types of things that have been missing from the story for so many years.
If the film attempted to make Tupac seem credible, it succeeded in doing just the opposite. Deciding to do a personal narrative may have made it difficult to characterize Tupac as a likable man. It was extremely hard to empathize with a man who seemed to talk more than act. It was also a poor directorial move to blatantly juxtapose contradictory statements made by the rapper within a heartbeat of one another. At one point in the documentary, he actually admits his lack of will to follow through with everything that he proposed in his Thug Life “movement”.
Other than the jaded focus of the movie, there exists no new insight. The movie becomes dense and worn out by clips of a rising and setting sun presented over the discourse of the storyline. Tupac’s need to be resurrected may be strong, but is the public’s need to see him come to life once every year for the rest of eternity as strong? Maybe it’s time to let the man die and allow the negative connotations of his name be laid to rest in the back of people’s memories instead of conjuring controversy for them to mull over until the same time next year, when “Tupac: Resurrected, Again” is released.
Grade: D
