Review: Respect

It seems obvious to state that biopics are largely aimed at people already interested in the subject, but it's easily overlooked when the hype around a film is focused on selling it as a gripping story for the ages. Some incredibly famous and successful people led fairly straightforward lives; just because they get a film made about them doesn't mean that film is automatically going to be good.

In that respect, Respect has a tricky job ahead of it. The things that make Aretha Franklin (played here as an adult by Jennifer Hudson) interesting as a movie character aren't always the things that made her successful as a musician - and her musical career, at least as presented here, isn't exactly high drama. She grew up in an extremely musical household where her talent was recognised from a very early age (by family friends like Sam Cooke and Dinah Washington), music labels were competing to sign her, and the only thing holding her back from the success that was her due was a handful of men standing in her way. Like that was ever going to stop her.

So the drama has to come from other directions, which is a different kind of problem because nobody likely to see a film about Aretha Franklin wants to see her getting slapped around by her husband / manager Ted White (Marlon Wayans). Even her overbearing but well-meaning but domineering and gun-toting preacher father C.L. Franklin (Forest Whitaker) can be a bit much, even if he's clearly an obstacle to overcome rather than a bad personal choice.

This ends up hinting at a more interesting Franklin in a handful of scenes that never quite gel. The Franklin who likes sex, can arrange a world-beating song, and is driven to succeed but is wracked by "demons" possibly linked to childhood sexual abuse never quite comes into focus, even when she's staggering around on stage drunk. Respect ends up feeling like the film equivalent of the authorised biography, where only the best-known dirt gets aired and even then only just enough of it to avoid accusations of sweeping it under the rug.

That isn't automatically a bad thing, and to be fair this is clearly as much aimed at people who just want to hear the hits and see her role in the civil rights movement cemented in the public record as those looking for a dramatic story. For the former, it's good news: the hits all get the respect they deserve. Hudson, who's performance is excellent all around, is unsurprisingly good with the musical numbers, which range from early jazz standards right though her 60s classics.

This film's demure approach to her private life can be confusing - good luck keeping track of her children - but it's very much an approach that's building towards the icon she became, where elements that don't fit (no matter how interesting) are kept to a minimum. No surprise then that aside from recording, performing, and overcoming crappy men, the focus is on her work with the church and with the civil rights movement, both of which are treated with - and there's that word again - respect.

Respect doesn't follow Franklin right through her life. It wraps up with the recording of her 1972 gospel album 'Amazing Grace', which is presented as her turning her back on the drink and the demons that bedeviled her pursuit of material fame. It's a fitting climax; the only way it could have been stronger is if we'd seen more of those demons in the two and a half hours before.

- Anthony Morris