Respect (2021)

 Score: 3.5 / 5

Jennifer Hudson makes me feel like a natural woman. Or at least she does when she sings it as Aretha Franklin in the new biopic Respect, which chronicles the life and music of the late legend. The story goes that Franklin personally approved of Hudson playing her, which is enough to tighten anyone's vocal cords. This isn't the first time recently that a big name played Ms. Franklin; the third season of Genius on National Geographic, starring the incomparable Cynthia Erivo, is still on my watchlist. There will always be movies about famous singers, but some just hit a little different; the story of Franklin's life hits a little differently these days, and thankfully Respect is big and bold enough to make its mark.

The film works hard to dramatize a twenty-year period of Franklin's life, from her youth in 1952 to her biggest album Amazing Grace in 1972. Played as a young girl by an awesome Skye Dakota Turner, she grew up with a lot of music in her life until the sudden death of her mother (Audra McDonald, too briefly in the movie but utterly haunting in delivery) shocked her into silence. Her home life left a lot to be desired, and the film briefly suggests that her father (Forest Whitaker) is abusive and possibly alcoholic; she is further raped and impregnated twice by a young man in her father's house, and was a mother of two by her late teen years. The movie never really explores the effects of these traumas on Franklin's art or life, apart from repeated references to her "demons" taking control of her, which is a massive and separate spiritual/religious abuse absolutely ignored by the screenplay.

But Franklin rose majestically above the troubles of her young life and managed to make multiple jazz albums early, establishing her career even as her father managed her business affairs. He also manages her personal life, or tries to, as he strongly objects to her relationship with Ted White (Marlon Wayans), probably because he sees too much of himself in the younger man. No musical hits, though, for Franklin, and that bugs her to rebellion. She decides to demand "Respect" and, after an all-night writing session in her living room, she and her girls record the hit number. Watching Hudson channel -- rather than imitate, although you can tell her voice is not, totally Hudson's own -- the legendary singer is nothing short of transcendental, and the filmmakers know it. Director Liesl Tommy, whose stage credits are really interesting, works best in highly theatrical scenes of female intimacy and musical performativity. So the drama of the movie, effectively, only serves to string together Hudson's almost-nonstop singing to the point that the film reads more like a musical than a biopic.

Few of the other actors matter, and few nuances of the screenplay matter much in the end. Whitaker pops in and out as a charismatic caricature of an abusive father and dangerous man of faith; Tituss Burgess briefly blesses us as musician James Cleveland to heroically help Franklin create her Amazing Grace recording. The movie rolls through all-too familiar tropes in its turns, and its treatment of the heavy drama in its subject's life is so vague and noncommittal that I don't even remember most of it. But just seeing Hudson take us all to church repeatedly, tirelessly, and as intensely as her character did is more than worth the price of a ticket. She was great in Dreamgirls. Here, she's godly.