'Get On Up': Was It Worth of It's Subject? [REVIEW]

He went by many names. Mr. Dynamite. The Hardest Working Man In Show Business, Soul Brother #1 and of course, his given name, James Brown. Now Brown gets his well-deserved biopic Get On Up. It covers the course of his life from childhood through to his heyday, including growing up in abject poverty, the abandonment of both parents and the musical talent that emerged from a very early age.

Like Ray, the biopic deals with the less glossy sides of Brown’s life – from domestic violence to his treatment of the band members that helped made him famous. As played by relative newcomer Chadwick Boseman, who also portrayed Jackie Robinson in 42, James’s character is given an emotional heft that underpins his musical accomplishments and brings a deeper substance to his story.

Get On Up is also about Brown’s friendship with musician Bobby Byrd, played by True Blood’s Nelsan Ellis, who, if the movie is to be believed, may be the only person aside from his children that Brown every truly loved. Like the woefully underrated movie Talk To Me, which dealt with the friendship of legendary D.C. radio personality Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene and radio executive Dewey Hughes, it’s a bromance of sorts that reveals a lot about both the insecurities and motivations of both men.

In that respect, Get on Up works as much as a 2-hour movie about a 50 year career ever can. Brown was a prolific musician who not only ran one of the tightest bands in the history of music, he, like Ray Charles, also grasped the importance of ownership early on. That and his equally legendary tightfistedness helped Brown amass a fortune that is still being fought over.

Director Tate Taylor’s storytelling style, which includes shifting timelines and breaking the “fourth wall” by having Boesman as Brown directly address the audience, will be praised by some and loathed by others. While it gives you a sense of just how many personas Brown had and how larger than life he was, it also becomes confusing at times and undercuts the movie’s flow. Brown’s activism is glossed over, although he was a central figure of black power, at least in the music business. He recorded “Say It Loud: I’m Black and I’m Proud,” in 1968, the year King was killed, as an ode to the civil rights movement. In the movie, it comes across more as a feel-good anthem.

Where Get On Up is most amazing, unsurprisingly, is its musical numbers, especially the recreation of Brown’s historic T.A.M.I performance and the show he did in Boston the day after the King assassination.

That Taylor captures the emotional arc of Brown’s life, which provides insight into his abuse not just of women, but of the men he made music with, does put Get On Up a notch above many other biopics. But in some scenes, Brown descends into caricature instead of the complex, difficult, tough, musical genius he truly was.

Bosemen transcends any weaknesses of the direction and script, getting Brown’s thick Southern twang down (no doubt helped by the fact that he’s from Anderson, S.C.) as well as his dance moves. He and Ellis as Byrd have a chemistry that is missing from some of the scenes with other actors, including Jill Scott as Brown’s second wife, who comes across as a pretty prop.

To capture the essence and complexity of a man and career like Brown’s is an almost impossible task, but in Get on Up, Taylor and Boseman come tantalizingly close.

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