Respect
Stepping into “Rsspect”, I realized I knew surprisingly little about the “Queen of Soul”. This biopic aims to give an overview of Aretha Franklin’s upbringing, struggled with making music that felt authentic to herself while addressing her toxic relationships with men and addictions. It’s an admirable effort anchored by some solid performances but handicapped a bit by some confusing editing and lack of story development with some key characters in Aretha’s life.
While I struggled to keep track of the timeline covered in “Respect”, this film is kept afloat by a powerhouse performance froM Jennifer Hudson, an impressive turn from Marlon Wayans and the always reliable Forest Whittaker. The film also excels in the costume design field with the outfits helping encompass the culture at the time in an effective way that will likely get some recognition come awards season.
With a two and a half hour running time, it is clear that there was simply too much story to do justice to Aretha’s story. I have often been referred to “Genius: Aretha” for a more thorough overview of her life and career, which makes sense because that is a mini series that can use several episodes to go through the trials and tribulations she experienced. The decision to focus more on scenes revolving around Ted White (Wayans) and his beef with a studio manager in Muscle Shoals instead of her relationships with her children was confounding to say the least. Especially since the former leads to a fight scene that was comically goofy and out of place. One gets the feeling that the creative team didn’t want to dive too much into Aretha’s seemingly distant relationship with her children in order to give us the expected redemption arc found in most biopics.
I left "Respect" with, for lack of better wording, immense respect for Aretha's legacy and the struggles she had to overcome. But I was left with more questions than answers at the end of this film and I'm not sure if that was the intention of director Liesl Tommy's vision for this larger than life musical legend.
Medium
-Brandon Collins
