On paper, The James Brown film biography based on the life story of The Grandfather of Soul played by Chadwick Boseman sounds great, however the representation which can be seen in cinema’s across the country is not so great. The film stays on the surface of James Brown and has little to know depth , at times the transitions from one scene to the next do not make sense and read like a GCSE level drama project. The film in its entirety did not feel like an authentic representation of the Hollywood film budget which would have been applied to the project, surprisingly the film did not have any sweeping shots of Luxury interiors, or international locations, rarely did the film touch on the glamour and decadence associated with Hollywood living or the international impact of James Brown’s music catalogue. The overall finish applied to the film was less Hollywood block buster and appeared to be more of a Sunday afternoon made for television movie. The slow pace of the film is driven by a string of well know hits, its saving grace is that these well known, nostalgic tracks act as a narrator. A major fail in this movie is that there is no lead up or reveal of how James Brown passed away, instead the audience is served a dry piece of archive footage and some text revealing James Brown passed away Christmas 2006. Overall the film was disappointing, and was not on the level of other films of a similar nature and subject matter such as Dreamgirls, What’s Love Got To Do With It, or the TLC biopic which were all released prior to “Get On Up.”
