You can tell that Tate Taylor's misfiring biopic about the Godfather of Soul would have made more sense as a TV movie within the first few minutes. There is the great James Brown preparing for his legendary appearance in rock 'n' roll concert movie The T.A.M.I. Show in 1964. He is sauntering down a corridor backstage at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and there, lo and behold, are The Rolling Stones looking all Anglo and angular in one dressing room, and there next door, lordy! are those nice, wholesome Beach Boys huddled around, practising their five-part harmonies.
Next thing, we see an appreciative Mick Jagger (the real one produced Get On Up) grooving along and taking notes as Brown whips the crowd into a frenzy on stage. This is the kind of blunt exposition and shorthand that Taylor, director of the truly egregious The Help, uses in this rather sanitised biopic of the greatest funk soul brother of all time.
Instead of real character examination and a natural narrative, we are bombarded with breathless reminders of just how very important James Brown was. In fact, leading man Chadwick Boseman addresses the camera at several points to remind us of just how very important James Brown was.
Taylor's movie, like a JB performance, also jumps and slides confusingly from scenes of a comeback show in '93, to Brown in 1988, by then wild-eyed and in trouble with the IRS, terrorising some white folk with a shotgun; to Brown performing for the troops in Vietnam in '68, to his impoverished upbringing in the backwoods of Carolina and Georgia . . . and then to various high points in his extraordinary career and back again.
It's an exhausting and annoying approach that's as choppy and frenetic as Brown's incredible music. But unlike Brown's incredible music, it means Taylor loses momentum far too many times during Get On Up. It's all style over storytelling. Biopics can be by their nature episodic, but this is too much flashback and not enough flash.
But Get On Up is worth a look for Chadwick Boseman's incendiary performance. He has Brown's imperious gaze down brilliantly and that is quite a lustrous pompadour he sports. He is compelling as Brown - a volcanic presence on stage, a dictatorial band leader off, and at home, both a loving family man who dotes on his kids but far too often, treats his wives with a cruelty that Taylor largely chooses to overlook. Superbad he sure was - and in more ways than one.
The live scenes are excellent and beautifully shot and Boseman nails Brown's raw talent for drama and pure showmanship (in one electrifying scene, he blows Little Richard off the stage). Brown was possibly the greatest frontman of all time, the first of the great soul shouters who had an indelible impact on both rock and soul, and while Get On Up is all very well done, it has little feel for the subject or the era.
Brown grew up smack in the middle of the triangulation points of church, brothel and prison and his ascent to political figurehead and social activist are all covered with box-ticking efficiency. But the film ends abruptly, a full 13 years before his death - another sign that Taylor wishes to spare Brown's memory the relative indignity of his final years as money problems mounted and his career eventually wound down.
And what a career it was. Get On Up is a let-down, but you will leave the cinema wondering if any of the bland non-entities who pass for music stars these days will ever have a movie made about them in 40 years' time.
Alan Corr
