-By Frank Lovece

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Missing a target as big as a barn, this confidently and sleekly directed if overlong and shapeless biopic of the late hip-hop star Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G., is a requiem sop to his fans and a whitewash—no pun intended—to anyone else. Jamal Woolard in the title role is impressive, though, giving off an utterly relaxed, young-Forest-Whitaker vibe though he's never before acted onscreen.

Wallace, who was shot and killed in 1997, just shy of 25 years old, is an icon in music circles, a latter-day Fat Albert who'd been to the joint and now had lots more to say than just "Hey, hey, hey-ayyyy!" Portrayed here as a natural storyteller and rhyme-meister, who gave reportorial accounts of inner-city life in the crack-epidemic years of his youth and then the après le deluge days, he nonetheless remains a cipher in Notorious, despite a running time as overlong as the man was overweight.

Opening with his murder in March 1997 in L.A., the movie flashes back to Wallace's chubby childhood in Brooklyn, where he's played by Christopher Jordan Wallace, his own son by singer Faith Evans (Antonique Smith). Teased and put-upon, sheltered by his Caribbean-immigrant single mom (Angela Bassett), he plays at rapping but chooses to go after the bling. Dropping out of high school (not depicted here), he becomes a drug dealer and eventually gets imprisoned (arrested not in the film’s New York but in North Carolina, another example of how the movie, despite its aura of authenticity, cares more about the myth than the man). After his release and the birth of daughter T'yanna with his girlfriend Jan (Julia Pace Mitchell), he makes a demo tape that nets him up-and-coming indie-label exec Sean "Puffy" Combs (Derek Luke).

The rest and the rise you've seen a billion times before, and the filmmakers provide little insight into what made their subject tick. Maybe Wallace really was as shallow and callow as he comes off here, but given the talent displayed in his lyrics and his success, as far as it went, in navigating the dangerous entrepreneurial waters of drug-dealing and the music business, one suspects there was more to the man than the sometimes-misguided and sorely tempted saint we see here. Dude was arrested outside a club in '96 for threatening to kill two autograph seekers, smashing their cab's windows with a baseball bat, and then pulling one fan out and punching him. He was sentenced to 100 hours of community service in response—and a couple of months after this, was arrested at his New Jersey home on charges that included possession of four automatic weapons with laser sights, enlarged bullet clips and filed-off serial numbers.

The movie doesn't care to even suggest any of that, making the filmmakers' exoneration of Wallace from any involvement with Tupac Shakur's infamous 1994 shooting a bit suspect. The guy we see onscreen wouldn't have been involved. The guy who lost a civil suit for beating and robbing the friend of a concert promoter in 1995? Who knows? The film is too busy glossing over real life with a host of aphorisms and pronouncements: "Don’t chase the money, chase the dream." "We can't change the world if we can't change ourselves." Once you're on top, you can only go down."

Yes, folks, these are actual lines of dialogue. Oh, and Angela Bassett, who's been phony-ing in her performances as often as not over the last few years, can't decide if her character has an accent or not.