Bio-pic of Billy Holiday that is just as interested in her life on the toilet as on her life on stage!
The most interesting thing about this so-so Motown production is not the film itself, but the politics that surrounds it. I am not a "Lady Day" fan and although I think she had a good voice and is marked down in music history as "a legend", there is nothing really essential about her.
(A tough thing to say - but the legacy is nightclubs not concert halls. Cult records, not chart toppers. Let us keep perspective here.)
I personally think Diana Ross has had a more interesting life and is the better singer because I prefer pop to jazz.
The problem with any bio-pic is that it needs some driving narrative beyond "aren't/weren't they great on stage." Holiday was raped/abused at an early age and this is put forward as the reason for her behaviour and yet this is a guess and a clichéd guess at that.
Addiction happens equally to people that are and aren't raped or abused, that come from good homes, that are from all ethnic backgrounds. How does Hollywood explain those addictions away?
A more fair reading of her life would state that she liked "bad boys" and found them exciting. She went willingly to the party and was the last to leave.
Ross doesn't do a bad job of going through the range of human emotions, although she doesn't really look much like real thing. I suppose being black and being able to sing (with only a nod towards Holiday) was good enough for the casting people?
As one astute other reviewer noticed she was a figure among many in the jazz scene, but other famous people are nowhere to be seen. Are the makers frightened of litigation with these living people - or paying them off so they won't sue? The trick many bio-pic makers employ.
This is a scattergun scenes-from-a-life film. Some of them work, some of them don't. Some are amusing, most are not. Sometimes I was entertained, mostly I was not. However I was always entertained when Ms. Ross sang.
The most interesting thing about this so-so Motown production is not the film itself, but the politics that surrounds it. I am not a "Lady Day" fan and although I think she had a good voice and is marked down in music history as "a legend", there is nothing really essential about her.
(A tough thing to say - but the legacy is nightclubs not concert halls. Cult records, not chart toppers. Let us keep perspective here.)
I personally think Diana Ross has had a more interesting life and is the better singer because I prefer pop to jazz.
The problem with any bio-pic is that it needs some driving narrative beyond "aren't/weren't they great on stage." Holiday was raped/abused at an early age and this is put forward as the reason for her behaviour and yet this is a guess and a clichéd guess at that.
Addiction happens equally to people that are and aren't raped or abused, that come from good homes, that are from all ethnic backgrounds. How does Hollywood explain those addictions away?
A more fair reading of her life would state that she liked "bad boys" and found them exciting. She went willingly to the party and was the last to leave.
Ross doesn't do a bad job of going through the range of human emotions, although she doesn't really look much like real thing. I suppose being black and being able to sing (with only a nod towards Holiday) was good enough for the casting people?
As one astute other reviewer noticed she was a figure among many in the jazz scene, but other famous people are nowhere to be seen. Are the makers frightened of litigation with these living people - or paying them off so they won't sue? The trick many bio-pic makers employ.
This is a scattergun scenes-from-a-life film. Some of them work, some of them don't. Some are amusing, most are not. Sometimes I was entertained, mostly I was not. However I was always entertained when Ms. Ross sang.