Bodied is produced by the likes of Eminem and Adi Shankar. The movie also features real-life rap battlers such as Dumbfoundead, Hollow da Don and more. The movie streaming is available on YouTube Red.
Apart from just two rappers passing poetic and rhyming insults at each other, Bodied has a lot more to offer. Bodied is a thought-provoking satire on how and why words can be hurtful. Words are used as metaphors for a weapon by Joseph Kahn, the director of the movie. Bodied premiered in the 2017 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). It went on to win the people choice award in the Midnight Madness category. The film raises some serious questions but doesn’t necessarily answers them all. Bodied never shy away from getting into the sensitive topics throughout its runtime of 121 minutes. It puts you in an awkward situation and at the same time instigates conversation for liberals and many others who would shut it for the sake of being morally correct and decent. It is definitely going to become one of the most celebrated movies in the rap battling category. Gratefully, Bodied, on no occasion feels obscure as it briskly sails through witticisms, critiques, and colorful as well as intriguing characters while spitting brilliantly curated bars.
Adam, beautifully portrayed by Calum Worthy, is a graduate student at Berkeley. Everything starts off when Adam with his girlfriend Maya goes to a rap battle for the research purposes of his thesis on the use of N-word in the rap battle scene. Adam sees the rap battling as a competitive poetry spitting world. He then involuntarily ends up battling and finds out that he has a talent for it. He gets profoundly submerged into the rap battle scene where he realizes that passing offensive comments and being belligerent garners more praise. He then goes into a rap battle with his mentor Beyn Grymm, played by Jackie Long. This is the part which the movie makes you realize many things, makes you questions and doesn’t answer them, just leaving you to answer these questions by yourself. Nevertheless, this voyage, in due course places Adam at odds with the liberals who see his activities as annexation at best and utterly discriminatory, misogynist, homophobic, and chauvinist at worst.
The movie is totally about the scenario of a nerdy white boy becoming a rap battler. There are all kinds of talks and lecture on racism, being morally correct, being liberal but believe me, none of them is cringe-worthy. How is it okay to be really offensive and morally incorrect when you are battling and how the same thing is a huge deal for the outside world, Bodied tries to connect them together where the screenplay acts as a bridge. The rap battles and the rhymes, thrown in the battle are excellently crafted and it makes the film look amazing. For all you rap battle lover the movie is a treat.
When the characters go into the rap battles, Kahn is very much confident about it, but outside of the rap battle scenes, the film occasionally struggles to find the right way to flow. The climax of the movie is a very bold the way Adam is portrayed. Apart from that, Adam’s character has not been explored the way it should have been in the beginning. Kahn has managed to make controversial topics into rap battles so that these topics are not covered by a conversation which could have gone either way of the thin line.
For the sake of finding out why the reactions over the words said in these battles exists, the rap battles are totally eager to offend and very much filled with all kinds of offensive comments. Bodied will pull you in even if you are not a big fan of rap battles and leave your mind whirling. You’ll witness words used as weapons, and you’ll at no time stop bearing in mind the sores they perpetrate.
