Film: "Bodied"
An outrageous satiric twist on 8-Mile about a white grad student who becomes obsessed with rap battles.
Executive produced by Eminem, this rambunctious satiric twist on 8-Mile centers on Adam (Calum Worthy), a white, bookish grad student writing his thesis about the world of rap battles. In these underground showdowns, rappers insult one another with lines as shockingly disrespectful as they are lyrically brilliant.
After unwittingly stumbling into a battle, Adam discovers that he has a surprising knack for it and is taken under the wing of master battler Behn Grymm (Jackie Long) and a multicultural crew including Prospek (Jonathan Park) and Che Corleone (Walter Perez). Horrified at first by his own propensity to deliver heinously offensive language in the heat of battle, Adam is forced to reconsider his beliefs about what it means to be politically correct and what his privilege affords him.
Known for helming music videos for heavy-hitters like Taylor Swift, director Joseph Kahn brings his energetic visual sensibility to this biting hip-hop comedy, which interrogates serious issues like cultural appropriation, but goes about it with the same irreverent and hilariously profane spirit as the battle rappers he depicts.
D: Joseph Kahn, US, 2018, 2h
