Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Aretha gets her props
Franklin bio-pic hits all the right beats, but may be too respectful.
During her reign as the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin accomplished so much that cramming her productive and tumultuous life into two and a half hours shortchanges her.
It’s obvious the makers of “Respect” want to do her justice, but director Liesl Tommy (“Jessica Jones”) and screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson (“Fosse/Verdon”) hit the bullet points of her life but only occasionally take the viewer inside the head that made such breathtaking music.
If you’re playing Music Bio Bingo, you will find alcoholism, domestic abuse, diva behavior and other squares get filled quickly. The challenge with Franklin is that her life is almost too large for an IMAX screen.
As a child ( played by Skye Dakota Turner), she was already performing gospel and jazz standards with a poise more seasoned performers couldn’t match. Her father C.L. Franklin (Forest Whitaker) was a pastor who worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the civil rights movement.
His houseguests included people like Sam Cooke (Kelvin Hair) and Dinah Washington (Mary J. Blige). Both of her parents were also solid musicians, but she saw very little of her mother (Audra McDonald).
Franklin (played as an adult by Jennifer Hudson) was a teenage mother and had a series of unfortunate marriages, but at the point where most musicians would have reached the big time, she struggled. John Hammond (Tate Donovan) of Columbia Records discovered Billie
Holiday, Count Basie, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, but his insistence on pairing her with standards and the Great American Songbook stifled her.
She really came into her own when Jerry Wexler (Marc Maron) of Atlantic Records had her record in Muscle Shoals, Ala., that she really began to shine and …
Before I start to copy and paste her Wikipedia page, I should probably say there’s a reason documentaries like “Muscle Shoals” and “Amazing Grace” do a better job capturing what she was like and why her music sounds great. The one reason to explore Franklin’s life in a movie is to show something that we can’t see on YouTube.
For example, simply zeroing in on her complicated relationship with her domineering father could have made a more gripping and rewarding movie. Whitaker, who played Hudson’s dad in “Black Nativity,” can be enthralling to listen to and downright scary when C.L.’s temper flares. Franklin clearly loved her father (his picture is on the dust sleeve of her “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?”), but both could drive each other crazy.
That aspect of her life seems truncated, as does her violent marriage with Ted White (Marlon Wayans). With all the broad comedies he has made, it’s easy to forget that Wayans has underutilized dramatic skills that prevent him from being a one- note heel. He’s just charming enough to make viewers see how Franklin could have fallen for him but volatile enough to see why the union had to end.
Because the narrative flits all through a trio of decades, Hudson doesn’t get much of a chance to get her teeth into Franklin as a character. We don’t get much of a sense of how she grows or changes as the years pass. In “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” the film sticks with Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship, so we can see Tina becoming her own person and triumphing over her abusive ex. There isn’t a similar arc here.
Hudson tears through Franklin’s catalog with gusto, but the Queen’s original performances are a singular experience. Including a clip of Franklin performing Gerry Goffin and Carole King’s “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman” and once again making it her own was a mistake because it reminds us that Franklin made a habit of taking songs like “Respect” and “I Say a Little Prayer” and making listeners forget that Otis Redding and Dionne Warwick performed them first.
Franklin’s recordings are groundbreaking and timeless. Perhaps it’s unreasonable to expect that there are filmmakers who are just as gifted on set ready to tell her story.