For a film that had been on my "to see" list for a couple weeks, and that I had tried to see once before only for the screening to be sold out, "Get On Up" was not at all worth the wait.
I was afraid going in that by covering a large swath of time the film would be unfocused, but it was far worse than I'd anticipated. The film hopscotches back and forth through time (permissible in a time travel film, not so much otherwise) in a failed attempt at building dramatic momentum. With so many years to cover, I guess the filmmakers decided they couldn't craft an arc of rising dramatic tension by working chronologically, so instead they jump all around. It seems like they had a list of "dramatic" scenes written and put in a hat, then would pull one out at random each time a moment of "drama" was required. This also allows them to obviously cheat there way out of writing scenes with actual endings. Instead of leading artfully from one scene to the next, they'll often cut away to something completely different, hoping you'll fail to notice that they never return to offer the original scene closure.
This is the textbook example of why I prefer biopics that manage to limit their scope. By telling a story of one specific moment in a character's life, it allows us to really watch them struggle and try to overcome something. Films like this go so quickly from one event to the next that it feels like watching a Cliff's Notes version of the person's life. This doesn't give the actors much to sink their teeth into--they're forced to do an imitation instead of actually playing a character trying to accomplish objectives. In this case, the leading performance (imitation) is very good. But what is the point in a good performance when it's in the service of a bad movie?
It seems to me that films like this are merely made out of the hope they'll score some Best Acting nominations come awards season. That's not enough of a reason to make a movie, and it's certainly not enough of a reason to see this one.
D
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