A self-indulgent vanity project loathed by critics and loved by fans strokes its ego on streaming

There’s nothing wrong with stroking your own ego from time to time, but doing so in a feature film based in part on your life experiences while simultaneously playing the title role opens the door to widespread criticism, something 50 Cent discovered firsthand when Get Rich or Die Tryin’ hit theaters in 2005.

Things weren’t looking good from the off, after Samuel L. Jackson publicly rejected the opportunity to lend support, based entirely on the fact he wasn’t convinced by Fiddy’s acting abilities. As you’d expect from the veteran icon, he was 100 percent correct, because calling the would-be actor’s central turn “lifeless” would maybe be doing it an injustice.

Widely panned by critics, Get Rich or Die Tryin’ could only rustle up a measly 17 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, but that barely even tells half the story. Even though audiences didn’t exactly go out of their way to catch it on the big screen – as evidenced by the fact it only earned $46 million at the box office on a $40 million budget – it does boast a surprisingly high 70 percent user approval rating on the aggregation site from upwards of 250,000 votes.

With that in mind, you can justifiably call Get Rich or Die Tryin’ a fan favorite, which means the current resurgence on streaming shouldn’t be deemed as a shot in the dark. Per FlixPatrol, the self-indulgent vanity project that failed on every conceivable level outside of its unlikely enthusiasm from the general public has become one of the most-watched movies on Google Play this week, even if the video games starring 50 Cent as himself are arguably better.