Dan Mecca started his review by saying, “Biopics,
especially musical biopics, are both an easy sell and a tough nut to crack.
Like the most resilient of sub-genres, the formula is so tried and true that to
stray from it is to avoid what is obvious. You have a storied, genius artist
whose beginnings are (and have been constructed to be) the stuff Americana is
built on: a poor child from a fractured family with God-given greatness. Through
tragedy comes legend, and from fame comes tragedy all over again. And yet, at
the end there is much to celebrate.”
While “Get On Up” does not hide from the images of all
of the fairly friendly musical biopics that have come before, director Tate
Taylor does his hardest to find the funk in the story of the Godfather of Soul,
James Brown, played amazingly by Chadwick Boseman. Jumping around the James
Brown timeline with abandon, Boseman continuously breaking the fourth wall to
keep the audience engaged, Taylor wants to have fun with “Get On Up” the way
Brown did on stage.
To be sure, there is no shortage of the man doing what
he did best on stage throughout the two hour and eighteen-minute runtime. All
of the hits are mentioned, along with the splits and the shimmies and the shakes.
Mecca credited, “In every way Taylor is a better filmmaker here than three
years ago when he helmed The Help.” The actor-turned-director is must more
visually ambitious this time around, using his cinematographer Stephen
Goldblatt most especially in the necessary flashback scenes to Brown’s
childhood. Mecca noted, “Taylor seems to know how stale these moments can be to
the overall bio-narrative, doing his best to skim through the far past,
capturing a pinch of beautiful Southern landscape and a schmidge of tortured
family history.” Viola Davis and Lennie James do great work as James’
mostly-absent parents. Octavia Spencer makes an appearance as Aunt Honey, the
woman who finally raises him to be a man, amongst some considerable filth.
Obviously, Boseman is the highlight and Taylor is
smart to keep his leading man front-and-center in every, single scene.
Evidently, this is the James Brown story, and Boseman plays him at just about
every age, the film opening in the middle of the 1988 incident resulted in a
car chase and a late-in-life prison stint for the Godfather of Soul. The scene
is mostly played for laughs, recognizing the peculiarities that came to
somewhat define James Brown throughout his life.
It's these little moments of comedy (not to mention a
few scenes that bravely patch Brown’s female appetite to his documented desire
for spousal abuse) that momentarily raise the subject on-screen to something
more raw, riskier. Unfortunately, there’s not enough to distinguish “Get On Up”
as it’s own type of James Brown story. Mecca noted, “There are still dark times
and multiple wives (none of whom serve as real characters), broken friendships
that provide large metaphors for life choices and quaint reconciliations that
are meant to accent that patented final swan song in movies like this. Perhaps
that is the ironic compromise one makes when attempting to tell the grand story
of an artistic trail-blazer to the world: following a reliable formula.”
Since we had lost a great actor too soon, I think it
would be right to see this movie. Boseman did a great impression of James Brown
that he was believable in the role. I was a fan of James Brown’s music and if
you were too, then you would see this movie. I didn’t know until 2010 that
James Brown used to be a wife abuser, much like how Sean Connery used to
advocate beating his wife. However, you can’t deny the man made great music,
and this movie will make you believe that Boseman is James Brown. They actually
used the actual songs from James Brown during the live performances so that
Boseman could lip-sync. Check this out on Netflix and have a great time
enjoying this.
Next week I will be looking at a comedy on a play that
I read in college in “Black History Movie Month.”
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