Review of Get On Up (2014) by Meok91 — 30 Dec 2014

This is not the kind of film that I would generally choose to watch myself, but alas, it was the end of the year and a family member and myself were looking for something to watch that neither of use had seen and would be vaguely interested in watching, we settled on this. James Brown is an exceptionally interesting character who led an exceptionally interesting life, what I really liked about this film was the warts and all portrayal that was fantastically acted by Chadwick Boseman. Throughout the film I went from disliking Brown, thinking he was a rather horrible person, to feeling sorry for him. In that way it was a very true to life portrayal, this was an immensely talented but deeply flawed man, deeply flawed like the rest of us.

This film has many flaws, the main one for me being moving from one time to another in Browns life. In one scene you could be looking at a scene from a show Brown played, in the next you could be looking at one from his childhood. I really disliked this, particularly due to the fact that sometimes there was no marker on screen to tell you what year it was, sometimes it took me a minute or two to figure out where this scene fitted into the time line, this really took away from the film for me and was not conducive for fluid, pleasant viewing, it didn't work for me at all.

I think this can be more accurately described as a character study as opposed to a biopic. Other characters just flitted in and out of the story not really making much of a mark, except that of Bobby Byrd who was a good friend of Brown. Due to the moving from one time period to another I have to say I felt the plot of the film suffered and at times felt a bit aimless.

This is a far from perfect film, but it does make for interesting viewing simply for Brown and Boseman's performance, everything else kind of feels like back round noise which is a pity. I really feel that Brown and his life could make for a fantastic film, this particular one was just not it.