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December 14, 2008
Cadillac Records
It says something about the caliber of the singing that I thought the actors in Cadillac Records were lip-syncing to original recordings. Though I give them credit for doing a fine job in the pipes department, someone either at the theatre or in the editing room did a terrible job syncing their lips to the audio track.
The individual performances were engaging and entertaining. Eamonn Walker scared me with his Howlin' Wolf glares; Jeffrey Wright frustrated me with his acquiescent Muddy Waters; I followed Columbus Short down Little Walter's spiraling addiction, and Beyonce was convincing as Etta James (though in fairness I've never seen the real James).
But the movie lacked an emotional core. That's understandable, since emotional resonance rests on truthfulness and re-writing the history of brothers' business acumen into a One White Man Show leaves little room to suck a viewer into the beating heart of a story.
My feeling about the movie is best described as follows:
[W]e're never given much insight into who Chess really is, what makes him tick or why we should care about him. --Michael O'Sullivan, WaPo
The film glosses over the blatant exploitation of black talent by Jews (at the time deemed second-class whites by US cultural norms), but since it has So Much History To Tell (or rewrite), I can't fault it for being kind to my people.
My memory is that Muley Willis and his uneasy relationship with his estranged father in Adam Langer's Crossing California gives better insight into Chicago's ethnic divisions and connections than this film.
Nevertheless, Cadillac Records is enjoyable and worth the ticket price.
Rotten Tomatoes Top Critic's round-up
"Got Their Musical Mojo Working, by A.O. Scott in the NYT
Ebert's review
Peter Travers' mini-review in Rolling Stone
"Muddying the waters," by Ty Bur in the Boston Globe
Posted by cj at December 14, 2008 03:31 PM