NWA & Eazy-E: Kings of Compton (2016) User Reviews

There things he did from the heart

[nogodnomasters · 3/10 · 16 October 2017]

This is a documentary of Eric Wright, aka Easy-E a "street pharmacist" who formed N.W.A. and then died from AIDS in 1995.

The documentary was not very professionally done from graphics to soundtrack. It consists of a bunch old footage as people talk about Eric's love of kids, rap, drugs, and guns. The film is divided into chapters as we discover Compton had drugs in chapter one and in chapter two they talk about music style of the 80's but never played any of it. Yes, it appears the documentary was so low budget they didn't buy the rights to any music. So while we have a documentary about Easy E who is solely famous because of his music, we don't get to hear any of it. It reminded of that Jimi Hendrix biopic where they didn't have the rights to his music.

The film is almost entirely of interviews of people talking about Easy. They could have done better but wanted a cheap product to get out quickly riding on the heels of the success of "Straight Otta Compton".

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

Cheap, shoddy and pointless.

[barryjames-mc · 1/10 · 16 July 2016]

This is a low budget, sanitized and very poor documentary. No music from the artist(s), which is always a bad sign, no new interviews with any of the major players, although I do have to admit that I didn't watch the last 15 minutes because I couldn't take the blandness anymore, so maybe they got one in that last section, but I doubt it.

A string of C list, seemingly connected, 'stars" mumble anodyne, largely pointless stories to camera, interspersed with often duplicated images of NWA, the occasional original interview clip, live clips with no music, and worst of all, present day, cheesy reenactments, shot in black and white and featuring the worst cast of lookalikes you could possibly imagine. A repeated scene is someone supposed to be Dre sitting at a mixing desk, with clearly no idea what he's doing, while someone sits next to him, waving a hand gun in time to the (fake) music.

It is painfully awful, obviously a cash in on the recent biographical movie. It's a great subject for a documentary, but this is a hack job done on the cheap.