The James Brown biopic “Get On Up” hit theaters last weekend, and its treatment of the Godfather of Soul has largely flown under the radar. Highly formulaic, the musician biopic has quickly fallen into formula: growing up in poverty, a talented artist rises to fame and fortune, almost (or does) lose it all by falling into the throes of avarice and excess, then, wiser for their failures, finds happiness and contentment in the later years.
Boost with catchy renditions of the artist’s most famous works, catchy musical numbers full of sweat and smiles, rinse and repeat.
“Get On Up” certainly falls into that formula, but treats its subject with such rank honesty that it’s hard not to like. Brown is shown as a flamboyant, boastful, charismatic man who has a talent for getting people to do what he wants him to do, mostly in the service of himself (though those others get enough of their own to make the ride worthwhile). Chadwick Boseman, who played Jackie Robinson in “42,” plays James Brown as perhaps the mirror image: both men are equally driven to success, but where Robinson was an almost sainted figure, Brown is certainly, at best, equal parts devil and angel.
The genre is in full swing, enough so that it was parodied 7 years ago in “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” where John C. Reilly’s title character walked (hard) virtually the exact same path walked by Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, and Brown, or at least their cinematic avatars.
Derivative or not, “Get On Up” is a solid film that deserves better than the paltry box office it scored going up against admittedly the movie of the summer in “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Boseman gives one of the performances of the year, as does Nelsan Ellis as Bobby Byrd, Brown’s right-hand man.
