Light-hearted or tone deaf ? You decide
The High Note (M, 113 mins) Directed by Nisha Ganatra Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★ 1⁄2
In present-day LA, soul diva and music industry legend Grace Davis has hit what might be the end of her creative career. She hasn’t released any new material in a decade, and her most popular and oft-requested tracks are mostly 30 years old now.
She can still knock ’em dead in the front rows, but the retirement scheme of a residency in Las Vegas looks to be all she has to look forward to.
Grace – as played by Diana Ross’ daughter Tracee Ellis Ross – is still a ferocious and gorgeous presence on stage and off, but we sense her fires are fading.
Just as well then, that Grace has her assistant Maggie still cheering her on from the sidelines, urging her not to rest on her laurels and back into the recording studio.
Maggie, as played by Dakota Johnson, is secretly remixing and polishing some of Grace’s most legendary hits, apparently towards inspiring the diva to go back to the studio and make a new record.
Trouble is, Maggie is only a personal assistant in Grace’s orbit, and no-one is going to take her seriously as a creative force when she doesn’t have a single credit or piece of music to her name, other than a few bedroom noodlings being endlessly re-worked on her laptop.
But when Grace’s manager – played with a complete lack of enthusiasm by Ice Cube – recruits some young gun to remix one of Grace’s signature tracks, and he turns in a few minutes of cookiecutter Euro-trash that would have sounded tired in 1995, Maggie seizes her unlikely moment.
Complicating matters is the fact that Maggie has just started dating a young man she met busking outside a record store.
Luckily, I guess, young David is only holidaying in the starvingmuso demi-monde, and is actually independently wealthy.
So, will perky and unsinkable Maggie get the boy, resuscitate the career of her idol and carve out a reputation for herself as a producer worth watching, while learning a few life-lessons along the way?
Of course she bloody will. Whether or not you care enough to want to watch her do it is entirely up to you.
That the black women legends of the industry – Aretha Franklin, who Maggie endlessly references, in particular – all forged their careers and greatest songs out of the heartbreak of the civil rights and Vietnam War era is of no apparent consequence to Maggie or anyone around her.
All that is required to compose a deathless tune in Maggie’s world is a brief chat with an entity known queasily as ‘‘your authentic self’’.
Of the exploitation, abuse and racism that still racks the business, we hear nary a word.
The High Note is either a light-hearted and likeable fantasy of the Los Angeles music industry, or a white-washed, clueless and resolutely tone-deaf take on the same. Over to you to decide on that one.