'Get Rich or Die Tryin'' is worth about as much as its star's stage name: Fiddy Cent.

Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2005)
Starring: 50 Cent and Benz Antoinee
Director: Jim Sheridan
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

"Get Rich or Die Tryin'" is the film debut of fourth-rate gangster rapper 50 Cent. His no-talent crap makes me long for the day when I was panning 2Live Crew as a music reviewer, and his awful acting makes me want to host a Will Smith and Ice-T film festival, just to remind myself that there are talented rap/hiphop musicans who turn into talented actors.


The plot of "Get Rich or Die Trying" chronicles the rise of of a poor black child, as he struggles to escape a life of crime in pursuit of wealth as a rapper. Or something like that. 50 Cent's character (Maurice or Marcus or Muppet or something--I've forgotten the character's name, because my mind was numbed by the crappy plot) doesn't seem to be driven to create art as Eminem's character in "8 Mile"... hell, it's unclear WHAT he is driven by, other than the urge to escape having to be seen in any more unintentionally funny prison shower fight scenes. (And I'm sure the giggles the shower fight scene inspired in me were NOT what the filmmakers intended, because one of the more remarkable features of "Get Rich" is its near-total humorlessness.)

"Get Rich or Die Trying" is every bad gangster movie, and every bad blacksploitation movie (with a dash of bad prison movies included for additional suckage) rolled into one. It contains countless textbook examples of how not to use cameras and lighting; is full of badly written dialogue, trite characters and situations; has a ludicrous and badly conceived storyline that can't even seem to get basic historical facts of its own backdrop straight (the most glaring of these is the "invention of crack" which, based on the age of the characters, was invented long before they took up the street thug mantle); and it doesn't matter how much certain cast members may appear to struggle to rise above the shoddy material they are working with, they are dragged down by the man who is so bad an actor that he can't even play himself in a film that's supposedly a "75% true" bio-pic--the man whose talent can't even buy him a dollar worth of name, 50 Cent!

Hell, just considdering the rap performances in the film--with the exception of the one at the very end--50 Cent's nickname might also be a description of what his musical talent might go for if put up for auction on eBay. I kept expecting a Wayans brother to show up, because at more than one time, I felt like I MUST have stumbled into an unfunny sequel named "I'm Gonna Git You in a Scary Movie, Sucker!: Part 4'