This year, one of the pleasant surprises in the usually dead month of January was Notorious, a well-crafted biography of rapper Notorious B.I.G. But while it wasn't a flop -- its $37 million U.S. gross was more than enough to recoup its $20 million budget -- it wasn't the mainstream hit it should have been, either.

About half of the critics who reviewed it didn't much care for it. I wonder how much of that had to do with the fact that it's a rap biopic. In style, structure, and tone, it's practically indistinguishable from the biographies of, say, Ray Charles (Ray) or Johnny Cash (Walk the Line). Granted, Jamal Woolard is no Jamie Foxx or Joaquin Phoenix. But his performance is solid, and the story is strong. I was as enthralled by Notorious as I was either of those other films.

Directed by George Tillman Jr. (Soul Food, Men of Honor), Notorious follows the same basic pattern as most films of this genre. You start in the present or with the artist's death, then jump back to his childhood to catch a few pivotal vignettes, then move quickly through his formative years into adulthood; the subject makes it through the hardscrabble years into sudden success, loses touch with his roots, becomes abusive to his friends, is humbled by injury, illness, or some other setback, and ultimately finds peace and/or dies.

As an adult, Biggie is played by a newcomer named Jamal Woolard, who turns the obese rhymer into something of a teddy bear, a soft-voiced lug who's good to his mother and, well, OK, sometimes carries a gun. As a child, he's played by Biggie's real-life son, Christopher Jordan Wallace, and his doting mother, Voletta, is played by Angela Bassett.

Biggie makes it big when he meets Sean "Puffy" Combs (Derek Luke), an up-and-coming record producer who appreciates Biggie's talent and gets him out of the drug business and into the recording studio. From there the trajectory should be familiar even if you've never heard of The Notorious B.I.G. -- you know there will be swanky CD-release parties and willing groupies and baby mama drama. Biggie, already a father thanks to teenage foolishness, takes up with the rapper Lil Kim (Naturi Naughton), then cheats on her with Faith Evans (Antonique Smith), whom he marries impulsively and barely tries to stay faithful to.

As if that weren't enough melodrama for one man's life, there is also the matter of the infamous East Coast/West Coast rap rivalry. The film (which was written by Reggie Rock Bythewood and Cheo Hodari Coker) posits that this rivalry is mostly traceable to a rift that developed between Biggie and Tupac Shakur (Anthony Mackie) after the latter was non-fatally shot outside a recording studio where Biggie happened to be at the time. As the movie tells it, Tupac paranoically believes Biggie is responsible, an assumption that producer Suge Knight (Sean Ringgold) -- a rival to Puffy Combs -- is only too happy to perpetuate.

Even if rap isn't your thing, it's easy to appreciate the skill involved in writing and reciting the stuff, and Woolard (a rapper himself) is able to convey in his performance why Biggie was so popular. Nothing about Biggie's lyrics suggests transcendent genius, but his consistently spot-on performance of them, coupled with his outre offstage behavior, made him a celebrity. Woolard, who seems to have been born to play this role, captures all that very nicely, aided by winning supporting turns by Bassett, Luke, Naughton, and Smith. Even a non-follower of rap like myself knows an effective story when he sees it.

The project was clearly a labor of love, and 20th Century Fox has paid the film its due respect with an impressive two-disc DVD release. (Technically, it's three discs: the third is a digital copy of the film for you to put on your computer or iPod or wherever it is you kids put your movies nowadays.)

Disc 1 has both the theatrical version and the director's cut, which adds six minutes of material. Two commentaries are available (but only over the theatrical cut): one with the director, screenwriters, and editor, and one with Biggie's mother and two managers, all of whom served as producers on the film. The first commentary is rather serious, with the filmmakers focusing on the nuts and bolts of the production. The other one is quite a bit more human, as Biggie's mother and managers reflect on their personal experiences with Biggie. It's very sweet, actually.

Disc 2 offers several featurettes: a basic behind-the-scenes tour (27 mins); one about Biggie's lyrics (9 mins); one about casting actors to play the real people (9 mins); an amusing look at "Biggie Boot Camp" (6 mins), where the actors were taught to rap, talk, and dance like the people they were portraying; "Anatomy of a B.I.G. Performance" (5 mins), about recreating one of Biggie's concerts; and a very detailed interactive map showing all the ins and outs of the night of Biggie's murder. I'm not sure even JFK's assassination was this closely scrutinized.

It's clear that the movie -- and especially the loving DVD treatment -- is intended for fans of the Notorious B.I.G. Those who found the movie enjoyable but have only a casual interest in the rapper would probably feel like the DVDs are excessive. For Biggie fans, though, it's a must-have.

Notorious is available now from 20th Century Fox

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