Review of Get On Up (2014) by Joe H — 19 Aug 2014

Chadwick Boseman is utterly outstanding (and a strong Oscar contender), but he could have been even better given more thoughtful material to work with. The problem with Get On Up is that we've fundamentally seen it before.

It's all too familiar and formulaic. The film attempts to subvert genre cliches with an unconventional narrative but falls unwittingly into those same cliches in almost every other aspect of the film.

Vignettes of Brown's life unfold before us with as much meaningful penetration as mainstream Hollywood biopics will ever allow, and they never fully coalesce into anything satisfying on a dramatic or emotional level.

While it is entertaining on the surface, the film is hardly the penetrating character study one would hope to see in a story about the Godfather of Soul. Unlike its titular subject, this biopic seems to be just going through the motions.