The resultant shamelessly inspirational vehicle has been compared favorably to Rocky, but it's a lot closer to being a straight-up remake of Purple Rain, with a posse of scary thugs standing in for the wisecracking Morris Day and the Time. At any rate, 8 Mile is rousing poor-boy-makes-good formula all the way to the end credits. Despite the presence of the hoariest kinds of cliche, I couldn't help but respond to the swagger and the beats, the urge to overcome adversity and repudiate humiliation, and the menacing rumble of hop-hop beats from a black car. The climactic rap battle is a truly exciting testament to the enduring ability of performance to conjure intense feelings in an audience. And, yes, it's easy to take a rooting interest in Eminem, whose big eyes here are photographed as code for his vulnerability.

But part of his schtick is getting real tired, specifically his repeated exploitation of that working-class background as a justification for his brutish lyrical rage. As Triumph the Insult Comic Dog once put it, "My mom was a bitch, too, but you don't hear me singing about it." I don't usually show much love for Kim Basinger and her uniformly shrill performances but, man, is there a more thankless role in the movies than playing Eminem's mom?

Despite the shortcomings - too long, too pat and too eager for you to like it - 8 Mile could be the poster boy for the undeniable virtues of simple, straightforward moviemaking. And Brittany Murphy makes a great impression during a few short scenes, in which the mere presence of a sexually confident female provides some needed respite from Eminem's self-aggrandizing loner routine. ("I think I kinda need to just do my own thing, man, you know?" he mutters in the final reel.) The box-office receipts alone would do wonders for his career, even if his performance sucked - which it clearly doesn't. But the lack of ambition on display in his feature-film debut makes it an ironic triumph for a musician whose appeal remains singularly complicated.