Get On Up

Went to see the James Brown biopic Get On Up… was on the fence about this one but the good reviews convinced me to go. It’s not a bad movie but it does run a good 20-30 minutes too long and has a certain lack of dramatic tension. The biggest problem in James Brown’s life was largely his ego and his ability to refer to himself in the third person…. and also that time he held a room full of people hostage with a shotgun because someone pooped his bathroom and then led police on a high-speed chase… and, umm, because he was crazy. Or not. Or something. Given the movie starts with this incident, concludes with it 15 minutes before the end of the movie, and never gets around to explaining it, why he had apparently had a mental break, or anything that actually led up to such erratic behavior, that seems like a script problem. If you love James Brown music, there’s a lot of it, well performed and danced. If you want to see a killer acting performance of the man, then this might be worth seeing. Everyone else… maybe. Just maybe.