The average musical biopic—and most of them are pretty average—follows a predictable arc: the troubled childhood marked by flashes of genius; the record deals and hit album montages; the marriages torn apart by affairs, addiction and the ravages of fame. Even when these clichés are drawn from real life, it’s disappointing to see great artists reduced to formulas.
Aretha Franklin was one of our greatest artists, and Respect, the new movie about her early years, doesn’t entirely avoid those biopic conventions. But there’s real intelligence and feeling in it all the same.
This is the first feature from director Liesl Tommy and screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson, both of whom have worked for many years in theater and television, and they seem to know that even well-worn notes can sound newly resonant in the right hands. That’s one of the lessons of Franklin’s own career: Respect of course draws its title from an Otis Redding song that Franklin brilliantly made her own.
Like Diana Ross as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues—or more recently, Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland in Judy—star Jennifer Hudson doesn’t try to mimic her real-life subject so much as channel her spirit. The illusion doesn’t always take hold; notably, the actor seems less evocative of Franklin than Cynthia Erivo was in the recent miniseries Genius: Aretha. But Hudson is a vocal powerhouse, and her musical performances are frequently electrifying in what’s easily her most significant role since her Oscar-winning debut 15 years ago in Dreamgirls.
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