Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Nelsan Ellis, Dan Aykroyd, Craig Robinson, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Jill Scott, Lennie James, Josh Hopkins, Tika Sumpter, Aunjanue Ellis, Aloe Blacc, Atkins Estimond
Directed By: Tate Taylor
First off, huge congrats to my old Vine buddy Atkins Estimond for breaking through with a role in Get On Up. Hopefully he gets bigger roles later.
As a performance, Chadwick Boseman is worth the price of admission. He won’t get an Oscar nomination, which is a shame, because this is his second stellar performance in just a few years. Perhaps his next role will be a film worthy of recognition. Boseman’s stuck in a mediocre film that is lifted by his award worthy performance, and it’s that film that’s going to hold him back.
Get On Up fails as a piece of storytelling, let down by Tate Taylor (who did a better job on The Help). The women in James Brown’s life are written so forgettably, that it is hard to distinguish who Brown is with at any given moment. Does he sleep around? I can barely tell. Jamie Foxx’s Ray succeeded in really shaping the women who shaped James Brown, allowing for standout performances from Kerry Washington and Aunjanue Ellis (who is stuck in a very minor role here).
Most of the supporting cast is barely developed. Nelsan Ellis could have had a great role, but the writer and director felt that the focus should be James Brown, so we only got a snippet of what Ellis could really do. Same for Spencer, Aykroyd, and Davis, arguably the four most developed supporting characters… yet barely developed. Jill Scott has a sufficient amount of screentime, but is not a character. She’s a thing in a movie made to look pretty. There’s nothing written for her to give her character any depth. No character in this film was given a chance to have depth, except James Brown.
And what makes this error so much more frustrating is that with a runtime over two hours, the film is filled with long performances. It’s practically a concert film. Watching Boseman imitate Brown is necessary once, maybe twice, but he performs full songs seven or eight times in the movie. That’s a ton of screentime that could have been used to flesh out Brown’s relationships with other people. Sure, the idea is that Brown is an island, but as we know, no man is really an island. Some men think they are, but James Brown didn’t get to where he was by himself, without at least a few people having his back.
By shying away from this part of Brown’s life, we are missing a large chunk of who James Brown is, and through that, Chadwick Boseman was denied another layer to his performance. People don’t go see Get On Up to watch Boseman perform James Brown numbers. It’s a biopic. We came for the story, to know the man beyond the songs, behind the music.
Had Boseman not been terrific, I’d probably have landed the film itself in the C-range. But, Boseman’s performance is worth the ticket price, even if the film is incredibly frustrating. Don’t be fooled by the flash, there’s no story here. Well, there’s a thin story, and you’ve heard it before. A man rises from nothing and becomes something. But who are these people around him? What character did Aunjanue Ellis play? Why bother even casting a recognizable face in her role?
Judging on the box office for Get On Up, most people are skipping it in theatres. Make sure you get to see it when it comes to home video, because Chadwick Boseman really is a startling new talent. He’s someone who deserves an Oscar nomination, certainly within the next few years. He was fantastic as Jackie Robinson, and he’s almost a revelation as James Brown. I’m hoping, for his sake, that third time’s the charm.
FINAL GRADE: B
