I was never superfan of Amy Winehouse… in my memory, she burst onto the scene with a beehive and a smoky voice, said she wasn’t going to rehab, and probably should have. End of story. I knew a handful of her songs but didn’t know her backstory and never saw the documentary about her life (which maybe I should have).

So I put off seeing this flick for a couple weeks… but the more I put it off, the more it kept showing up in the theater app reminding me I should see it. So today I finally broke down and decided to get it out of the way. Which, y’know, might not be the right mindset to see any movie.

And, yeah, I was decidedly mixed to negative on the film. It’s way too long and doesn’t cover nearly enough material in interesting ways. There are so many segments that made me say “ok… and?!” probably because they meant something to her fans but not to an ignoramus like me.

And yet all that setup and detail was necessary for the pretty decent finale. If not for the seemingly unnecessary Leader of the Pack scene, we wouldn’t have gotten a moving revisit. And yet there seems to be huge gaps… like when she went from “just marijuana” to crack. And I wasn’t even convinced they covered her alcoholism very well either.

All that said, the lyrics on the handful of songs I know now have more resonance after sitting through all that humdrum.

On the positive side, Marisa Abela as Winehouse is a total winner. I sat up every time her cockney accent kicked off a brassy, bad bitch line… or when she was flirting with men. She’s so charismatic she almost saves the movie.

But only almost. I was deeply bored, thinking yeah, these seem like important moments, but why don’t they feel more interesting. It takes to the end to connect the dots and, by that time, it was too late. I’m giving it extra credit through for a winning performance.

Score: 70