GET ON UP

Get On Up

Grade: C+

Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Nelsan Ellis, Dan Akroyd, Viola Davis, Craig Robinson, Lennie James and Octavia Spencer, with Jamarian Scott and Jordan Scott as young James Brown

Premise: Born into extreme poverty, Augusta, Georgia native James Brown makes the leap from a life of petty crime to worldwide fame as the Godfather of Soul.

Rated PG-13 for language (including racial slurs), sexual content, brief drug use, violent/disturbing images and some emotional content

There’s only one type of person who needs to see Get On Up: die-hard fans of the late James Brown. If you were a huge fan of Brown, who died on Christmas Day 2006, and phrases like Godfather of Soul and Get Up Offa That Thing automatically make you want to smile and dance and sing, you need to hurry to theaters to see this new biopic of your hero.

If the previous sentence does not describe you, you don’t need to see this movie. In fact, I’d recommend you stay away from it. Despite an impressive pedigree (directed by The Help’s Tate Taylor, and featuring an award-worthy performance by Chadwick Boseman), Get On Up is a long, slow, slightly-miserable time at the movies. There’s some great music and moments of high energy, but a vague, muddled narrative, a lack of important characters and a warts-and-all approach that makes its subject seem like an egotistical prick quickly squander excitement and interest. Even compared to similar lengthy epics about famous musical names (2004’s Ray, 2005’s Walk the Line), Get On Up is a disappointment.

Plot

The film basically recounts some of the highs and lows in the life of the late Godfather of Soul. We get glimpses of his dirt-poor childhood, growing up in a shack in the Georgia woods with an uncaring mother (Viola Davis) who one day decides to run off, leaving James alone with a stern, abusive father (Lennie James). After a while, Brown’s father decided to join the army, leaving young James with Aunt Honey (Octavia Spencer), who runs a whorehouse in town. Still largely without any parental influence, James (played as a teen and adult by Chadwick Boseman) winds up in jail for petty theft before he’s even eighteen, but he’s largely saved by a chance meeting with Bobby Byrd (Nelsan Ellis), a budding musician who sees real talent in James’ gospel church-inspired energy, and convinces his grandfather to pay his bail. Byrd and Brown team up in a group that begins rocking night clubs, but they hit the big time after a trip from Little Richard (Brandon Smith) leads to a chance meeting with an agent from King Records.

With some assistance from manager Ben Bart (Dan Akroyd), Byrd and Brown’s group, “The Famous Flames”, takes off, but there’s no denying the real draw is the man at the front. With almost inhumane vocal range and smoothly eye-popping dance moves, James can soon command any audience, any venue, anything he wants. Life’s not perfect, though. With great fame comes adultery, alcohol and drug abuse, estrangement from his children, paranoia that his friends and musical collaborators are aspiring against him, and a gargantuan ego. When his personal and professional lives take a tumble in the late ‘80s, James looks, seems, and almost feels washed up, but an early ‘90s attempt to make amends with Byrd (whom he fell out with years earlier) gives him hope of a real comeback.

What Works?

If you’re not a James Brown enthusiast but you’re demanding a reason to see this movie, I can only give you one, but it’s a big one: the leading performance by Chadwick Boseman. Essentially an unknown when he scored the coveted role of baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson in last year’s surprise hit 42, Boseman also had a small appearance in this spring’s Kevin Costner drama Draft Day, but still isn’t anybody’s idea of a household name. He may still not be after his portrayal of Brown here, but that’s only because that portrayal is so utterly convincing. Research about the movie and Boseman’s preparation reveals the actor did not sing (unlike Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line), but, hearing the songs, it’s not hard to fathom that studio execs figured they couldn’t possibly teach an actor to sing and screech like that. So he lip-synched. However, I read that Boseman spent two months learning Brown’s dance moves, working with trainers and choreographers five to eight hours a day to master the groove (which he attempts to define for a flock of very white news reporters at one point in the movie); he’s also reported to have done more than 90 of Brown’s famous splits. With this absolutely convincing physicality, Boseman makes easily apparent the Godfather of Soul’s fiery passion, explosive energy, and undeniable sex appeal. He also speaks in an often unintelligible Southern accent that, I am told, is a dead ringer for the late Brown’s. But for all the flash and glamour of the performance with this physicality and vocal quirks, Boseman also makes clear Brown’s bitterness, his ego, his self-obsession, and—though he’d be loathe to ever admit it—his loneliness. A childhood without parents and without anything taught him to rely on only himself.

As Brown’s long-time collaborator Bobby Byrd, Nelsan Ellis has the only other significant, recurring role in the movie; he’s wonderful. It’s not a showy part, but Ellis is affecting in those key moments where he has to defend Brown the mad genius from nay-saying band members, reports, and execs.

Basically, if anyone is thinking or talking about Get On Up more than a few weeks from now, it’ll be due to Boseman’s tremendous portrayal. Were this movie released in October or November instead of August, he’d likely be a near shoo-in for an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Since this movie was released at the beginning of August, I won’t guarantee anything, but even without any year-end award honors, this work would be a huge highlight on anybody’s resume.

What Doesn’t Work?

It was someone’s idea to tell Brown’s story in very non-linear fashion—almost on the level of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s slapdash dramas 21 Grams and Babel. This was a terrible idea. While Ray and Walk the Line similarly used framing devices to avoid a history-book-style chronological trek through their subjects’ lives, Get On Up starts with a scene that cuts to an earlier scene that cuts to an earlier scene that cuts to an earlier scene, and then finally, we have a two-minute scene of young James Brown at his ramshackle home in the woods, before it bumps back out to another random concert. It’s almost half an hour before any sort of chronological sense is established. For one, this fairly random approach makes it hard for an audience to develop roots of interest and emotional connection. For another, it makes an already-long movie (138 minutes) feel even longer and more tedious because it’s so unorganized. And this random approach also pretty much eliminates our connection to any of the other important people in Brown’s life. Other than Byrd, no one else is established in detail. Dan Akroyd has a few scenes as a studio exec for whom Brown is a meal ticket, Craig Robinson plays a disapproving band member, Viola Davis flits in and out of a few scenes as Brown’s no-good mom, and Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer has maybe two short scenes. Only one of Brown’s rumored multiple spouses/mistresses has any significant screen time, but my disinterest was so considerable by the time she had three scenes in a row, I didn’t even care to catch her name.

I know nobody’s perfect, and warts-and-all movies about famous people, especially, are often praised for their grit and realism and for pulling back the curtain so we can see the ugly stuff, but Get On Up should prove a real test of any James Brown fan’s mettle. I’m not knocking Boseman’s performance, but with his selfish preening and raging ego, Brown comes across as the most unlikeable real person portrayed at the forefront of a movie since Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Were Brown alive today, this movie would certainly not make me a fan of his. It’s curious that a movie produced by one of his good friends (The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger) would make him seem like a person with so few redeeming qualities.

Content

There’s some cussing (including at least one word that starts with F), a bit of child and spousal abuse, a scene where a young Brown pulls the shoes off the victim of a lynching, a few scenes that hint heavily at what The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper would call “coitus”, and one scene where Brown smokes a joint laced with something else. I’m sure it’s nothing to what it could’ve been.

The Bottom Line

Despite a tremendous, award-worthy performance from leading man Chadwick Boseman, who lip-synched but did all his own dancing and even the splits, Get On Up is a drag, a long, disorganized, movie that makes its main character seem like a colossal prick. Unless you’re a huge James Brown fan, I’d avoid this one.

Get On Up (2014)

Directed by Tate Taylor

Written by Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth

Rated PG-13

Length: 138 minutes