Get On Up – The James Brown Story

In his follow-up to the four-time Academy Award-nominated blockbuster The Help, Tate Taylor directs 42’s Chadwick Boseman as James Brown in GET ON UP -The James Brown Story. Based on the incredible life story of the Godfather of Soul, the film gives a fearless look inside the music, moves and moods of Brown, taking audiences on the journey from his impoverished childhood to his evolution into one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Boseman is joined in the drama by Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Nelsan Ellis, Lennie James, Jill Scott and Dan Aykroyd.

James Brown lived  dominant musical voice and an outstanding African-American personality, period. In his own time, he became “Soul Brother Number ONE,” a larger-than-life Godfather of Soul. “JAMES BROWN is a concept, a vibration, a dance,” he told us recently. “It’s not me, the man. JAMES BROWN is a freedom I created for humanity.”

Playing more like an episodic mini-series than a movie, the 138 minute film is broken down into sections like, “1949, The Music Box,” “1964, The Famous Flames,” etc.  Professionally speaking, some of Mr. Brown’s career highlights captured in the film are his Boston, Massachusetts, performance right after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the recording of his iconic Live at the Apollo album in 1963, and his upstaging of the Rolling Stones on The T.A.M.I. Show.  All of these events, among others depicted, are worthy of great attention, but not all of them are given the treatment they deserve.  It just goes to show that the James Brown story can’t truly be contained in the confines of a single motion picture.

Additionally, the film goes back numerous times to scenes from Brown’s childhood (the young James Brown is played by twins Jordan and Jamarion Scott) where he lived in extreme poverty, experienced racism in the Jim Crow South, was abandoned by his mother (Viola Davis), abused by his father (Lennie James), and raised by his Aunt Honey (Octavia Spencer) in a brothel.  These scenes are critical because, while they don’t in any way excuse Brown’s repugnant behavior as a grown man, they do help  shed light on some of his many contradictions.

James Brown died on Christmas morning, 2006, after a brief illness. Remarkably, at the time of his unexpected death his touring business was more profitable than at any point in his career. Throughout his lengthy career Brown laid claim to many appropriate nicknames including “Mr. Dynamite” and “The Hardest Working Man In Show Business” but just one is an apt legacy. Long live James Brown – THE GODFATHER OF SOUL.