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The tagline for the latest biopic on an American icon reads: “Find out what that means. Good luck with that.
After more than two hours of Aretha Franklin’s messy new biopic “Respect”, what that means is unclear, wasting a lot of superb screen talent in the botched process.
This time it’s Jennifer Hudson playing the Queen of Soul – a few months after Cynthia Erivo played Franklin in a National Geographic TV series – and you won’t be able to leave the theater without a lot of respect – yes, RESPECT – for Hudson’s abilities.
But a meandering, fuzzy look at Franklin’s first three decades of life will also leave you saying a little prayer for the filmmakers. After all, if you are coming for the queen, you better not miss it. It missed.
Director Liesl Tommy, from a screenplay by Tracey Scott Wilson, offers a series of timeline vignettes to attempt to explain what nurtured Franklin, the daughter of a Detroit preacher who would light up the world with her voice.
“Music will save your life,” is the Hallmark-like slogan used in the film – spoken by a touching Tituss Burgess as Reverend James Cleveland. But that’s not heavy enough to explain how a woman who’s suffered rape, domestic violence, racism, misogyny, mental health issues, and drug addiction could win 18 Grammys. Will music save your life? It may work for Nickelodeon. You need more here.
Tracey Scott Wilson’s screenplay (“Fosse / Verdon”) is a collection of scenes that don’t do much, never really build, and are interrupted – out of necessity, of course – by overly long musical sequences. This movie needed someone to refine and clarify. He needed what Franklin was, an ideal performer.
Even Tommy herself seems a little bored at the end of the day when she starts dealing with black-and-white movies and old lenses, recreating TV interviews and even mixing up real ’60s news footage. She even appears in her own film – as a fan seeking reassurance from Franklin – as an Alfred Hitchcock fangirl.
It is telling that many of the small roles appear more than the main event. Mary J. Blige as the tumultuous and restless Dinah Washington gives the film an electric boost and Audra McDonald as Franklin’s mother is precious and understated, every second of their screen time leaving you begging for more.
At 6, Franklin endured separation from his mother – never explicitly stated in the film because his father was sleeping – and then his mother’s death at 10. The film’s first half hour dwells on these two calamities, starring Skye Dakota Turner as a formidable young Aretha and Forest Whitaker as her father, a complex role that mixes warmth and anger but never quite illuminating.
Franklin, who died in 2018, was raped and pregnant as a preteen, punched by her father and then punched again by her first husband (a fabulous, equally smoky and vicious Marlon Wayans.) The Queen was in the spotlight. once a civil rights. icon – standing with Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr – and a drunkard-ish who lashes out at friends. How much her abuse led to her addiction is only suggested.
Hudson isn’t afraid of getting ugly deep down, but maybe not as heart-wrenching as Andra Day did as Lady Day in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” “Respect” doesn’t linger in the darkest depths like this biopic of another struggling superstar singer.
This movie, unsurprisingly, is louder whenever the music takes over, especially when Hudson opens his mouth and musical sparks fly or when we are shown Franklin feeling his own sound, which didn’t happen. from several albums.
A sequence in an Alabama recording studio when she and her white band create “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” is tense and excellent, just like when she stumbles into the redesign of ” Respect ”for Otis Redding around a piano with his sisters in pajamas.
The film ends with Franklin at 29 recording his flagship album “Amazing Grace”, and another 360-degree camera revolves around his face. Alas, the movie itself has some grace but isn’t exactly stunning at all.
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“Respect,” a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures release which is in theaters August 13, is rated PG-13 for its mature thematic content, strong language, including racial epithets, violence, material suggestive and smoking. Duration: 144 minutes. Two out of four stars.
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MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents are strongly cautioned. Some content may be inappropriate for children under 13.
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Online: https://www.unitedartistsreleasing.com/home
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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
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