CAST HITS RIGHT NOTE
Dakota Johnson has a knack for making submissive characters seem strangely beguiling. Having exited the Red Room with her professional reputation intact, we now find the Fifty Shades of Grey star playing doormat to a capricious R&B diva.
Grace Davis’s (Tracee Ellis Ross) sadistic tendencies – such as choosing to sort through her entire wardrobe, after hours, at the end of a gruelling working week – might not be as clearly defined as those of damaged billionaire Christopher Grey, but Maggie Sherwoode (Johnson) is just as completely in her thrall.
The put-upon personal assistant has devoted three years of her life to pleasing the temperamental, LA-based superstar who struggles to even recall her employee’s last name.
Once again, Johnson makes such selfeffacement seem almost heroic, perhaps because of the resilience that underpins it.
By reinforcing gender stereotypes about subservient women, Sherwoode isn’t exactly a great role model, but you have to admire Johnson’s ability to turn the limitations of such potentially insipid ingenue roles to her advantage.
While Sherwoode tells heart surgeon best friend Katie (Zoë Chao) that being at Davis’s beck and call is her dream job, what she really wants to do is produce records.
To that end, she spends what little spare time she has secretly remixing Davis’s back catalogue with the help of a supportive engineer who appears to be working for free.
Serendipitously, her boss’s career has also stalled.
Davis can fill stadiums by performing her old hits to adoring fans, but the singer-songwriter’s
record label is actively discouraging her from recording any new material.
Long-time manager Jack Robertson (a funny, irascible Ice Cube) is already focusing on their respective superannuation plans, which is why he is trying to persuade Davis to take up a well-paid residency at a Las Vegas casino.
It’s clear the two women’s dreams will eventually coalesce, but first they need to overcome a series of obstacles the screenwriters chuck in their way.
These include the comic interference of Davis’s paid hanger-on (nicely played by June Diane Raphael), said record executives who are ageist and sexist as well as gormless, and Sherwoode’s blossoming love interest.
After flirting with her in an organic fruit store, aspiring singer David Cliff (rising star Kelvin Harrison Jr) seals the deal with an impromptu performance of Sam Cooke’s You Send Me in the outside parking lot.
Practically on the spot, Sherwoode offers to
produce him, an arrangement that sucks a bit of oxygen out of the primary relationship between the two female characters but adds texture to the soundtrack.
Cliff is also the catalyst for the feel-good, showstopping closing number, which will satisfy all but the hardest-hearted cynic.
The High Note’s tune might be a little overfamiliar, but the cast is uniformly on song.
Ellis Ross – Diana Ross’s daughter – also gives a formidable performance in this, her belated musical debut.
The High Note is now screening in cinemas