Review: Get On Up

Recent musician biopics seem to be really well made.
From the highly enjoyable Walk The Line, to the emotional Ray, we now have the king of soul James Brown taking centre stage.

I would not call myself a fan of his work, but I have huge respect for the guy and I am always impressed by his live performances from yesteryear.

As for the film, we probably have got the best portrayal possible of Brown played by the ever-emerging Chadwick Boseman. With a great career ahead of him, he could well have already given his best performance. In this film, we get the chance to see a controversial character who paved the way for basically every musician. Like many celebrities, he has many demons and conflicts during his professional career. I was expecting something as gritty as Ray and as enjoyable and energetic as James Brown himself.

I definitely got half of that. As for the a well structured story with true emotion, I felt as if I was missing something crucial.
As mentioned before, Boseman clearly holds this film together. The physical aspect of Brown is a big attraction. Whenever there is a concert moment in the film, all you can do is be highly impressed by Boseman's presence on screen. His explosive performances on stage really shows you how hard he has worked to portray this music legend.
Sadly two big problems was the lack of story structure and the editing. It felt hard to create any sort of flow or tempo. It felt more like you were dipping in and out of a collection of episodes in the wrong order. The whole pace of the film kept being stuck in first gear to be honest.

Thankfully, the performances and look of it still manages to make it a solid and respectable romp. You will definitely learn a lot about who Brown is, how important he was and the inspiration he gave to people. We see his tough upbringing, his rise in stardom and the flawed characteristics. The concert moments are the big highlight, but the unexpected jumps between different moments of his life will leave you frustrated.
Lots of potential that sadly did not hit a lot of the right spots. But Boseman's performance is enough to see this on the big screen.

Rating: 7/10