Respect makes an unintentional Walk Hard from Aretha Franklin’s extraordinary story
Solid performances can’t save a film so shamelessly invested in stale biopic clichés
Film Reviews Aretha Franklin
In a Hollywood landscape dominated by IP-based projects that entertain (or merely amuse) by delivering on (or slightly subverting) an established formula time and time again, the modern music biopic sometimes feels like the cheapest drug around. These films are often little more than glorified exercises in brand management. In between crowd-pleasing musical numbers that double as deferential fan service, actors in period dress-up dole out estate-approved biographical information at a steady clip. Everything from the music selection to the production design is designed to milk viewers’ prefab nostalgia. At this point, there’s little difference between how the industry approaches a legendary artist’s song catalog and how it adapts a comic book.
Respect, the latest post-Bohemian Rhapsody biographical drama, proves no different by turning the story of Aretha Franklin, played by Jennifer Hudson, into an overstuffed highlight reel. Tracey Scott Wilson’s script reduces two decades of Franklin’s life, from her early years singing in her father’s church choir through the recording of Amazing Grace, to a series of historical boxes to systematically check off. We watch her graduate from the choir to Columbia Records, then we watch her struggle at the label and under her father’s cruel management, and then we watch her sign to Atlantic Records where she becomes the Queen of Soul. Throughout, the film takes our emotional investment in this journey for granted.
Along the way, Respect shamelessly traffics in numerous biopic clichés thoroughly skewered by Walk Hard. Famous figures introduce themselves by their full names. The cast delivers expository dialogue that awkwardly offers or reiterates historical context. Montages of thankless struggle and glorious success pass in a blur. There’s a third act “dark fucking period.” Respect so closely hews to the Dewey Cox template that a potentially dangerous “spot the trope” drinking game seems inevitable. Franklin’s real life was obviously rife with drama worthy of the big screen, but Wilson and TV-trained director Liesl Tommy take a comprehensive, arrhythmic approach that treats major life events like soapy episodes or grist for the pop-psych mill.
Naturally, Respect leans on its ensemble to enliven the material. Sometimes, they do. Hudson stumbles on some of her dialogue , but she generally nails the musical sequences by infusing her own personality into Franklin’s work, elevating her performance from an impression to an interpretation; she brings songs like “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “Amazing Grace” to life, and it’s easy to imagine these moments inspiring sing-a-longs. Forest Whitaker, on the other hand, finds only two modes for Franklin’s father: cautious kindness and blusterous anger. Among the supporting cast, Marlon Wayans shines as Franklin’s abusive husband Ted White, conveying a bottomless well of self-loathing and insecurity. Meanwhile, Marc Maron brings some spiky energy to the table by playing Jerry Wexler like he’s Franklin’s bristly cheerleader, and Mary J. Blige steals the film for one scene as Franklin’s early-career mentor Dinah Washington. All of actors in Respect palpably strive to invest their scenes with real emotion, which only makes the trite dialogue and clumsy conflicts they’re saddled with stick out even more.
Part of the problem lies with Respect’s obsequious tone, with how the movie treats Franklin so regally that she feels more like an icon than a person. Wilson’s script weaves a potentially compelling thread by structuring Franklin’s story around the domineering men who govern her: Liberating herself first from her father and then her husband, she’s left to contend with the resultant trauma of her freedom. Yet, this concept largely dies on the vine because Franklin, as depicted, is less of a full-fledged character than a vehicle for her music. Attempts to fill out her personality by spotlighting her Civil Rights bona fides, such as her friendship with Martin Luther King Jr. and her avowed support for Angela Davis, are sketchy at best. Respect also renders Franklin so larger than life that the low points of her story never feel grounded in a dramatic reality. Her descent into alcoholism particularly feels superficial, communicated in the broadest possible terms before being quickly resolved. The film defines Franklin either by her voice or her pain, and such binaristic terms ultimately disservice and simplify a complex life.
Fans will probably eat all of this up, if only for the musical performances. But the movie’s best sequence points to an alternate path, maybe a better one. After Aretha signs with Atlantic, she’s famously whisked down to Rick Hall’s FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where she lays down “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” with a session band. Though a little uneven, the scene successfully captures the slow, bumpy process of artistic collaboration, in which good ideas are spontaneously introduced and trust organically develops between talented strangers. Contrast this with the cheesy scene in which Franklin is too-suddenly struck with the inspiration to compose the film’s title track. Or with a performance of “Think” that’s all but delivered to White after she no longer can stomach his violence, complete with close-up on Hudson’s face as she sings, “Freedom!” Or with the scene when a woman stops Franklin in a hotel lobby to tell her that how it feels like she’s singing directly to her. It’s a shame Respect would rather hit the notes than play the music.
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I saw the trailer for this and the second she started playing Respect fully formed I burst out laughing in the theater.
It also annoys me that they’re heavily implying that she wrote the song, when it was an Otis Redding cover.
I had to watch the trailer after reading your comment – maybe there’s some context in the movie like “Hey I’m playing with this other song, what do you think?” but damn that looks like they’re pretending she wrote it. I hope Redding’s estate sues if they really do that shit.
From what Ive gathered from other reviews, the scene in question is indeed Aretha playing around with a song established as Redding’s and it’s about them putting their spin on it rather than Aretha coming up with it.
Y’all are getting all this from a trailer?
They didn’t.
I am assuming that won’t be the case in the actual movie. She did arrange it and add the spelling, sock it to me, and “Re” repetition portions.
“I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel…”
“Oh Johnny that’s good! What’s that?”
“Oh it’s nothin’ June, just a new song I’m writin’.”
-Johnny Cash and June Carter, 2002
Next up, a movie about Elvis that heavily focuses on his songwriting process.
“Just tell them Jew York writers to finish the song already!” – Elvis as he eats a gigantic peanut butter, bacon and lard sandwich.
I imagine the film assumes that’s a given, and Aretha, with the help of the musicians, changed the entire structure, groove of the song, so it was more than a flat remake.
They did not. It was fully acknowledged in the film.
But will she restore the producer’s faith in Judaism??
moved
Ah, The Temptations!
This is a particularly bad case of someone being cut in half…
SPEAK ENGLISH, LASERFACE! WE AIN’T SCIENTISTS!
WRONG KID DIED!
Tim meadows would hate you
Do they imply that she fully wrote Respect? She reinterpreted an Otis Redding number.
Contrast this with the cheesy scene in which Franklin is too-suddenly struck with the inspiration to compose the film’s title track.I’m guessing this is a misremembering , but I could also believe that a biopic that sounds this lazy could have decided that it didn’t matter if they showed Franklin, and not Otis Redding, writing that song
Aretha did add the “Re, Re, Re…” part but I haven’t seen the movie yet to see if they credit her with writing the entire song. If the did then Redding’s estate should sue and receive a public apology!
I also have not seen it yet, and will recant if I’m wrong, but the trailer really really really REALLY makes it look like Franklin sat down at the piano and wrote it by herself on the fly.
If they did, that’s very disRespectful.
She did not write it, correct. She did adapt it to her own voice, most specifically by adding the R-E-S-P-E-C-T spell-out break down in the song. I THINK she added that. And that’s one of the most memorable parts of the song. It’s a great song that, like “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and “I Know What Boys Like,” its attitude and vibe completely change when sung by women rather than the men who wrote them.
I saw it. It was actually humerously lampshaded.
It’s like Straight Outta Compton pretending Dr. Dre came up with the Nuthin But a G Thang bassline himself when it was a sample (that he then had a bassist replay)
They make it clear she didn’t write it, they mention Redding by name, but she clearly arranges it with her sisters in a moment of feminist inspiration.
The takeaway line from this review, and the specific thing that makes any biopic a waste of time: “Part of the problem lies with Respect’s obsequious tone, with how the movie treats Franklin so regally that she feels more like an icon than a person.”Too many biopics are better described as hagiopics.
They often have to be in order to get the rights to the music. What’s weird is a film like that recent David Bowie one that neither uses the freedom to diverge from the formula, nor can it take advantage of anything Bowie wrote.
That accounts for the rose-colored lenses in musician biopics, but thinking ofmost biopics that aren’t musical and they’re pretty up the subject’s ass as well, at the expense of nuance and accuracy.Thinking of ‘The Theory of Everything’, for example, or what I’m sure will be a similarly clichéd biopic about Richard Williams (the one with Will Smith).
Well they had to paint Stephen Hawking in positive light, or else his estate wouldn’t let the filmmakers use any of his equations.
It was a pretty flawed movie in its own way but Velvet Goldmine is probably the best David Bowie biography we’ve gotten. Using fictionalized characters that feel true to the artist and their world seems better than a standard biopic that’s safe enough to please the estate.
Unfortunately, I think Velvet Goldmine is a rare exception, because David Bowie had such a varied and abstracted persona that the movie could create a character like Maxwell Demon that was immediately recognizable as a Bowie proxy. Add to that a soundtrack full of his contemporaries and newer artists who probably grew up listening to David Bowie for breakfast (Thom Yorke, Pulp, Shudder to Think), and Todd Haynes was able to create a world that was true to David Bowie without using his name, his music, or any specific details about his life.Out of curiosity, what did you think was flawed about Velvet Goldmine, other than watching Christian Bale trying to play a teenager?
It’s been a while but I remember my biggest issue with the movie was that if David Bowie faked his death on stage at the height of Glam I didn’t buy that the fans would have uniformly rejected him, if anything that seems like the opposite of what would have happened. Since the story hinges on that so much it’s really difficult to get past. There were more things that bothered me but yeah, I should really watch it again before I go around saying it has problems…
I love that film, but the Tommy Stone twist is odd. No one becomes a huge pop star by accident – it beggars belief that no one knew.
And the thing is, everyone knows Aretha was a Diva. Especially the people who loved her.
Another problem from the production end, and I always notice it, is you’d think people in previous decades wore only brand new clothes! Everything looks like they just picked it up the day before, so everything ends up looking like a costume, and it adds another veneer of phoniness to the proceedings.
Like drag queens and brand new wigs. Such a tell.
That often seems to be the case for cars, too. Too many period cars in movies look brand new or all the cars you see in a 1940s movie have cars from the 1940s, as if cars from the 20s and 30s all just disappeared when a new decade rolled around and therefore wouldn’t still be on the road.
I’ve never considered that aspect of the cars, but you’re right. Surely somebody was driving around in a car from 1925 when it’s 1940. Good call on that one.
Argh! I was about to make this very point. But I guess it’s understandable, given that if you’re driving some crappy beat up old car from the 1920s in the 1940s, it might be even harder to find that same crappy beat up old car in running condition some 100 years later. It’s probably not worth it for productions to try to find those vehicles for that ultra-authenticity, unless you’re dealing with a director who can warrant that expense (Tarantino, perhaps).
Hell, it’s not just clothes. Everything. I guess it’s because everything’s a prop and is kept in a curate, climate-controlled warehouse, but still. Cars are a big one for me. The poor, broke Italian immigrants in 1950s New York all tool around in mint-condition Buicks and Chevies that have just had $3000 worth of respray and detailing done just a minute before every time they’re on screen.
You know what movie really handles it well? The Godfather. There’s not a single element that seems re-created to convey the period- it just seems like that’s when the movie is set. The clothes and interiors all look lived-in. It’s an absolutely brilliant production design.
It does help that The Godfather was made only 30 years after WW2. I’m sure there were still a lot of those cars still around and parts of NYC probably still looked like they did in 30s and 40s. (But it is fantastic design!)
Yes, to all of that. But I’m talking about things as simple as the patterns on the wallpaper- it looks like my grandmother’s old house in Cleveland! Everything about it is understated and exactly right.
That was one of the joys of Mad Men. In 1960 they were wearing clothes from 1957.
I was not always as big a fan of that show as many people were, but the production design was gorgeous, absolutely beyond reproach.
they’d probably be better as musicals.
what’s the point of getting the rights to the music (and sacrificing the actual life story to get them) if they’re not going to use it? give the people what they want: a proper karaoke movie like mamma mia or something.
I think What’s Love Got to Do With It and most of Straight Outta Compton were the only movies to feel like they were about actual people.
This is 100% the vibe I got from the trailer.
I think you could say that the vast majority of musical biopics are “unintentional Walk Hards.” Walk Hard so accurately skewered that whole genre that if you were to watch it right after Bohemian Rhapsody, and didn’t know when it originally came out, you’d think it was specifically mocking that movie.
MAD TV nailed it when Dreamgirls happened.
I enjoyed this parody too. “Brava! Only the divine La Carey could sing so many songs without melodies! So effortless, it’s as if she made them up as she went along!” was particularly savage.
Ditto. Mad TV was underrated when it was on air. I mean, the writing in the ‘Dreamgirls’ one was so spot on….“That’s just how it happened to that Coal Miner’s Daughter!”“And La Bamba!”“And The Buddy Holly Story!”“And The Rose! And Eight Mile! And 42nd Street!”“And From Justin to Kelly!”
I love when Key and Peele are in a sketch. Debra Wilson is actually pretty impressive as a singer. She comes pretty close to hitting that whistle register in her Mariah parodies. Her Whitney Houston and Beyonce are also excellent.
Was pleasantly surprised to see her in Jedi: Fallen Order, as your former Jedi mentor.
Hey Whitney was one of the best celebrity impressions of the time. She got all the mannerisms done pat.
Yes! And Ares Spears as Bobby Brown was also well done. Not to mention his Missy Elliot.
“And Hysteria, The Def Leppard Story”
That Dreamgirls sketch always came off as tone-deaf to me. I suppose it works better as comedy for those who had no idea the darned thing was a Broadway musical from the early 1980s (that is, years before La Bamba, From Justin to Kelly, tho of course not 42nd Street), but I cringed through it when it aired and it still bugs me to this day.
I love that both quotes are Peter Travers, too.
I think it was a review right here on this site that said, accurately, “Walk Hard is not so much a parody as it is a blueprint”
“Walk Hard” also did an epic goof on Brian Williams before his biopic even came out! Talk about prescient.As Patrick Willems said, everyone tasked with directing or writing a musical biopic must be forced to watch “Walk Hard” first.
Also, everyone not tasked with directing or writing a musical biopic should watch it too.It’s the best comedy of its decade and Reilly got robbed of a nomination.
Heh. Yes.
And Aretha never paid for drugs.
Not ONCE.
There’d better be a fuckin’ Aretha machete fight in this.
Biopics exist to win awards for the actors and make money. No other reason. I can’t think of one truly great biopic film that stands on its own. I’m sure there’s one or two, but I can’t think of one.
How does it compare to the Genius bio?
I thought “Genius: Aretha” was excellent, and it sets a very high bar for “Respect” to beat, although, to be fair, it had eight hours to tell its story. Cynthia Erivo had Aretha’s look and sound down cold. It will be interesting to compare David Cross’ Jerry Wexler to Marc Maron’s.
I thought it was flawed but decent. It definitely was not a hagiography like this looks.
Erivo was excellent. I didn’t care for Cross’s Wexler though, too nebbishy. Like Ahmet Urtegun in Ray. Maron looks better just from what I’ve seen in the trailers.
This review makes it sound just as bad or worse, which would really be a shame. I got more excited by the Respect trailer than by the entire Genius miniseries.Biopics suck.
Interesting that Genius doesn’t even get a passing mention in the review.
Aretha Franklin needs to think about her whole life before she sings a song.
You mean she has to think (THINK!) about her whole life.
Nothing against the Queen of Soul who certainly did do her own take/arrangement on it, but I didn’t know this film states that she composed “Respect”- reading this review and again seeing the trailer (which would suggest this), I have to point out: Otis Redding wrote “Respect”.
Is Marc Maron now contractually obligated to star in every sub-par music biography?
yes
He must share an agent with Dave Grohl, who is contractually obligated to be a talking head in every sub-par music documentary
I never got to watch Cyntha Erivo’s Genius. Would you say that’s a better interpretation?
I can’t tell if this review is being very delicate about what Aretha’s childhood was like and glossing it with the “well, it’s the Dewey Cox template,” or if the movie itself is just like “well, her father was a difficult person and her childhood was hard sometimes here’s Jennifer Hudson” (in which case it should’ve just left it alone). Because Aretha’s youth is, uh, well, I doubt they’d get her cooperation (she was involved with the project before she died) if they were coming at it objectively.
Amazing Grace is an essential concert film that people worked extremely hard to recover, and once they did Franklin sued multiple times to prevent its release, even though she had obviously signed off on its filming in the first place 40 years prior. She never said why and I’m sure she had her reasons, but she obviously had an extremely strong view of how her life should appear onscreen and the subject having that control is not a great place to start from with a biopic about that person. Anyway, they should just release Amazing Grace to theaters again instead of this, what a movie.
Biopics are a difficult thing to pull off. Ray was an exception because the subject was an open book, didn’t have a problem with exposing the less savory parts of his life, and a filmmaker has more freedom in that. By Aretha was cagey, introverted, difficult and unknowable in many ways. Her art was her public face, and there’s a great film somewhere in that, but maybe not so much in a standard biopic. I’d rather see a great documentary. Maybe Scorsese can take a break from sanctifying his homeboys, and direct his attention to someone like Aretha.
I thought the classic story about “Respect” was Otis Redding saying something like, “That girl just stole my song.” (Not literally, but that Aretha made the definitive version.) I’m surprised if that wasn’t in there.
I think he jokes about it being Franklin’s song now in the incredible concert film Shake! Otis At Monterey, although he does his damnedest to take it back.
“Don’t you DARE write a song right now, Aretha!”
Wait, they have her composing “Respect”? I love Aretha, and am all for giving her a ton of credit for all her accomplishments, but are we supposed to forget that Otis Redding wrote the song?
I mean, Rocketman also hit some of the Walk Hard tropes, especially in the last rehab scene, but yet it all worked perfectly there.
While still dabbling in a lot of the standard biopic tropes, Rocketman managed to make them feel fresh again. Man, I do love that one.
Formula and templates are inherently not bad, it’s more about the skill of the movie being able to make it feel like a road less traveled to audiences. I always think of this Ebert quote regarding weepy films:“The art of a movie like this is to conceal the obvious. When the levers and the pulleys of the plot are concealed by good writing and acting, we get great entertainments like “Terms of Endearment”. When they’re fairly well masked, we get sincere films like “One True Thing” When every prop and device is displayed in the lobby on our way into the theater, we get Chris Columbus’ “Stepmom.””
Serious question: who plays Dan Akroyd and John Belushi?(No joke, Aretha’s the best actor in this scene.)
How dare you besmirch the acting skills of the great Matt Guitar Murphy! (RIP)
or Lou Marini (who I’m pretty sure I saw on a subway once)!
There it is. God I love this movie and this whole sequence in particular.
Shiiiiit.
Don’t you blaspheme in here!
Not for nothing but these motherfuckers do know that Otis Redding existed right? That’d be like making a Cyndi Lauper biopic and having HER come up with Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Or a Soft Cell biopic and having THEM come up with Tainted Love.Because going by the trailers and what these review reads like, it seems like they believe that Aretha invented Respect.
“Famous figures introduce themselves by their full names. The cast delivers expository dialogue that awkwardly offers or reiterates historical context. Montages of thankless struggle and glorious success pass in a blur. There’s a third act “dark fucking period.””Ahahahahahaha this sounds terrible, at least it provoked this pan.
I remember a scene in the James Brown biopic (which Chadwick Boseman is really good in, in spite of its general awfulness) in which he’s appearing on TV and walks up to the host and says something like, “I have a question for you, Mr. Dick Clark.” That was the first moment where I considered stopping the DVD and putting on something else.
It’s morbidly fascinating to see something so thoroughly indulge in cliches.
This genre better not die before I get my Huey Lewis story
The scene where he sing battles Ray Parker Jr to death will be golden!
I want to see the Marvin Berry story, and how he helped his cousin Charles find that “new sound” he was looking for.
We laugh, but I shudder to think how that scene is received today.
“Oh, so the short white kid teaches the black guys how to play, huh?”
“a bottomless well of self-loathing and insecurity” sums up Marlon Wayans perfectly.
I saw the trailer prior to the screening of Annette last Friday. It screamed ‘bad lip sync’ even before Annette, which had the cast actually singing in the takes. Yeah. No thank you.
First of all, calm down fellas. I’m sure Otis gets his propers. I’m assuming the film presumes the audience knows its Otis’s song, but Aretha’s version is a whole different structure and groove, not a remake per se. Aretha was an enigma. She didn’t reveal, confess her inner demons, so it makes sense that the film doesn’t delve into her interior as much as some would like, or expect from a biopic because that would be guessing on their part. Sounds like they respected her too much to do that. But if they get the music right, highlight her artistry, that’s all I care about. By all accounts, Aretha had been playing Respect in her pre-Atlantic live gigs, so she had already been working with it, but then did rearrange and restructure Respect at home with her sisters on the eve of the recording session. No need to sniff at that portrayal. As a musician, I cringe at these kind of scenes in musical biopics like in The Doors when Light My Fire just emerged full-form in a five-minute jam, but in this case, I buy it. When Aretha worked with the Muscle Shoals musicians, it was similar. None read music, so they were working off of a feel and vibes, and connected. That was part of her genius, and the magic of her collaboration with the musicians, and I’m not sure how you portray that in a film, because non-musicians or someone who doesn’t know the backstory will scoff.
You telling me Aretha Frankin has to Think! about her whole life before she sings?
She better.
She goes back, she goes back, she goes back way on a-way back when.
So you’re saying the wrong movie pitch died?
1. Does she manage to resist the Temptations?2. Does she cover Let Me Hold You Little Man?
Who plays Matt “Guitar” Murphy?
Did they touch at all on the subject of her being a deadbeat debtor in her later years, refusing to pay anything she owed and had to relinquish a townhouse for not paying her mortgage? People in Detroit know she was a nasty lady in her latter years. I’m generally not one to speak ill will of others, but in this case…Her narcissism was world class, though.
Respect was a cover. Did the movie depict her writing it???
Who knew Aretha Franklin accidentally halved her sister in a playful machete fight or that she never paid for drugs…not once.
When I saw the title of this review I knew I had to read it!
I judge my musical biopics by the number of sinks torn from the walls.
“I’m cut in half pretty bad, Aretha.”
Biopics are not a new thing. They were making them in the ‘30s and ‘40s—the only difference now is how much of sordid the detail gets included. None of us should be surprised when we watch a new one and discover that it’s following the same formula.It’s sort of like “Hey, that rock song only has three chords!” Were you really expecting something different?THB, the one and only reason I’ve looked forward to this film is to hear Jennifer Hudson belt out Aretha’s music. That woman has an amazing set of pipes and is one of the few singers who can really do justice to the artist and her material.
Biopics have become uninspired and uninspiring. That’s what happens when everything is factory-made. All the more reason I loved Rocketman.
I knew from the trailer and all the various cues (showing her coming up with Respect, the cliche shot of their back as they perform in front of the crowd, etc.) that this was gonna be another cliche music biopic
I simply can’t watch these anymore. Why watch them, when there are solid documentaries that tell you everything you need to know using real footage? Not really familiar with Jennifer Hudson, but she’s as bland as beige paint in comparison to the huge personality that was Aretha Franklin.