The Much Better Than Expected James Brown Biopic GET ON UP

GET ON UP (Dir. Tate Taylor, 2014)

  
I wasn’t psyched about the prospect of a PG-13 rated James Brown biopic from the director of THE HELP, yet Tate Taylor’s GET ON UP far exceeded my expectations.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s no masterpiece. It’s a bit disjointed, and suffers from many of the tired true-life story tropes that bogged down Clint Eastwood’s JERSEY BOYS, but it’s anchored by an invested, confident performance by Chadwick Boseman as the Godfather of Soul, and its concert sequences are electrifying.

Boseman, best known for his portrayal of another African American who made history, Jackie Robinson in Brian Helgeland's 42 last year, doesn't really resemble James Brown but he's got his voice, inflections, and definitely his dance moves down. It satisfyingly shows that Boseman has worked hard to step into the shoes of the hardest working man in show business.

Scripted by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, who co-wrote FAIR GAME and EDGE OF TOMORROW, the film bounces around through the decades with each year given a title like “1965: Mr. Please Please Please.”

After a beginning shot of Brown walking through a dark backstage hallway towards the sound of screaming fans (hello again, WALK THE LINE, and its satirical sister WALK HARD), Taylor delves right into one of the seedier stories of the man's past: his PCP fueled tirade with a shotgun in tow towards a room full of insurance agents, one of whom made the mistake of using Brown's private bathroom in his business located in the same building.

This incident bookends the timespan-hopping bulk of the movie which takes us from Brown's poor childhood living in a rundown shack in the middle of South Carolina woods with an abusive father (Lennie James), and neglectful mother (Viola Davis) to his legendary performances at Apollo Theater in 1963 (one of the greatest live albums ever) the T.A.M.I. show in 1964 (one of the greatest concert films ever) his riot-quelling show in Boston the night that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, his triumphant concert at the Olympia Hall in Paris in 1971 (another essential live album), and back again to his youth.

I so wanted to leave the version of Brown as a boy (played by twins Jordan and Jamarion Scott) behind, but the film kept bringing him back into the time-shifting narrative, even surreally inserting him into a later-day scene to make some sort of point that I'm not sure I understand.

Despite that Brown sang that this man's world “wouldn't mean nothing without a woman or a girl,” we don't learn much about his first two wives, played by Jacinte Blankenship and Jill Scott, except that they had to put up with a lot of shit.

The movie focuses more on Brown's friendship with Famous Flames bandmate Bobby Byrd played by Nelsan Ellis (True Blood, THE BUTLER), and his relationship with his manager Ben Bart, 
well acted by Dan Aykroyd, who appeared with the real Brown in THE BLUES BROTHERS back in the day.

These scenes are fine, but perfunctory and the same device of breaking the fourth wall - i.e. Brown talls directly to the camera throughout the film - that JERSEY BOYS did to death, doesn't help matters much either.

But, again, the fact that somebody with the name Chadwick Boseman can capture the fiery force of nature of the Funky President in so many standout scenes is cause for celebration.

There are times when Boseman's Brown comes on like a caricature, but then Brown often did in real life. One only needs do a Google image search or spend time with some clips of the man on YouTube to see that Boseman does a really respectable job with the role. 

Sure, I would've liked to learn more about how Brown's saxophonist Maceo Parker (Craig Robinson), who had many complaints about how his boss fined band members for making mistakes, left to join Parliament/Funkadelic in the '70s then returned to the fold in the '80s, or spent a little more time with Little Richard, wonderfully played by Brandon Mychal Smith, but then we're talking mini-series territory and the film, at 138 minutes, is long enough.

But Boseman's Oscar worthy performance surrounded by a roster of some of the greatest soul and funk music (all the original recordings) makes for a must see in my book (or on my blog).

So despite its many flaws, including a very uneven flow, GET ON UP is about as good as a PG-13 rated James Brown biopic from the director of THE HELP can be.

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Clint Eastwood's JERSEY BOYS Has More Clichés Than It Does Classic Songs

Opening today at a multiplex near you...

JERSEY BOYS (Dir. Clint Eastwood, 2014)

Jake Kasdan's 2007 spoof WALK HARD was supposed to have killed off all those cheesy music biopic tropes, but, dammit, here there all are again in full force in Clint Eastwood's new Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons film, JERSEY BOYS, based on the hit Tony winning Broadway musical.

There's also that tale of how Frankie Valli, Tommy DeVito, Bob Gaudio, and Nick Massi came together from humble beginnings to become one of the biggest selling bands of the 20th century is told to us by each of the quartet, one by one, directly to the camera, in a manner that recalls Scorsese (from GOODFELLAS to WOLF OF WALL STREET), just nowhere as stylish.

John Lloyd Young, who won a Tony for the part on Broadway, portrays front man Frankie Valli, a singer whose falsetto can make a mafioso cry. Christopher Walken is that friendly made man that cries when hearing Young sing, and is here to lend the film its only instance of big name star power.

Vincent Piazza (Boardwalk Empire) plays slick fast-talking lead guitarist Tommy DeVito, who gets the band in heavy debt to the mob, while the other members, Bob Gaudio, and Nick Massi (Erich Bergen and Michael Lomenda, who played the roles on the original show's first national tour) barely register, even when it's their turns to narrate.

The screenplay by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (based on their Broadway book) does a poor job of putting the Four Seasons into the context of the times. The narrative starts in the mid-'50s, but by the time the band has a bunch of hits to its name, we're not sure when many scenes are supposed to take place. 

There's nothing to tell us that Valli's solo hit “Can't Take My Eyes Off You,” which they, of course, make a big production number out of, was recorded and released in 1967, the Summer of Love. No mention of the Beatles, or hippies, or Vietnam, or who the President was, or whatever.

The fashions simply go from Mad Men-era duds into '70s Disco-era threads, with no reference to anything else going in the world outside of the Four Seasons bubble.

The well stocked soundtrack, chocked full of the band's hit songs such as “Big Girls Don't Cry,” “Sherry,” and “Rag Doll” (very convincingly sung by Young) keep the film bopping along, but the overwhelming amount of clichés in this by-the-numbers biopic outnumbers even the wealth of classic tracks that are crammed into its bloated 134 minute running time.

And for a film that comes on like a modeled mixture of THAT THING YOU DO and GOODFELLAS, it sure has a clunky flow.

But beyond all the thick Italian-American accents, depictions of street crime, and fourth wall breakage, JERSEY BOYS has a legit connection to Scorsese's 1990 gangster classic. Joe Pesci was a friend to the guys, especially DeVito, and is played here by Joey Russo, who does a passable impersonation. They really didn't have to have him say “Funny, how?” as if to show us the origin of his classic scene in GOODFELLAS though. They really didn't.

This just calls attention to the fact that, try as he might, Eastwood just doesn't have the Scorsesean swagger needed to make this material anything special above the music biopic average.

Eastwood's bland approach here - it's like he's never seen WALK THE LINE, RAY, THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY, COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER, LA BAMBA, GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!, THE DOORS, et al (Hell, it's like he's never even watched his own Charlie Parker biopic BIRD!) - just renders this into another TV movie that will be forever rerun on VH1 Classic.

Eastwood is far from one of my favorite directors, but he's shown a solid sense of storytelling in many of his directorial efforts. But JERSEY BOYS is a story that's been told so many times before that it would take something more inspired than just a close approximation of the music, and a rote run-through of the artists' rise and fall, to make it really sing.

Whether its the recycled chart toppers, or the regurgitated plot points, there's not a single original note that this mediocre musical plays.

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