There are some biopics that end too early and give us text about what happened next, leaving me thinking that that’s the movie I’d have wanted to see. Respect is a movie that goes on and on and on and yet still leaves us wondering about what was left out in the text. Jeesh… why did I have to sit through 2 1/2 hours of this to find out it was just the Cliff Notes?

Respect stars Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin, which seems pretty good casting to me. It follows her from a ten year old music prodigy (ahem, not played by Hudson) through twenty years of her life and career. Shows her marriage, friendship with Martin Luther King, fights with the label, and her rise to success. With plenty of performances to get your groove on.

For the first hour or so, I was engaged. It wasn’t a great biopic. but then it just keeps going with scene after scene after scene. Sometimes jumping abruptly forward in time and only giving brief indications of what was missed. I don’t know why the sequences they focused on were necessarily better… though there sure were a lot of them. Because this whole things goes on for two and a half hours. Not like Aretha Franklin didn’t accomplish anything, but why did it feel like there was so much filler?

Hudson is really good, of course. She can sing, as we all know, and she can act, as she does so well. The problem isn’t her or her pipes. I think the problem is they didn’t have an editor or someone who could trim this down… or spin it off into a miniseries that could really cover her whole life. In shorter one hour blocks.

Score: 68