Review

Review Date: 7-December-08
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Cadillac Records (2008)

I am tempted to compare Cadillac Records to a Whitman's Sampler, but the issue of sweetness gets in the way. Like all movies about famous recording artists, Cadillac Records features drugs, adultery, confusion, and pain but very little sweetness (unless you count the soundtrack). Whereas recent films in the same vein focused on one musician, this deals with multiple stars at a studio and the man who brought them together. It offers a taste of the artists and their songs without providing anything substantial.

Leonard Chess opened a recording studio in the early 1950s after developing an ear for blues as a bar owner in one of Chicago's black neighborhoods. As played by Adrien Brody, Chess is a paternal yet hard-nosed businessman with a jones for the finer things in life. He buys his first Cadillac after the studio scores a hit by Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright), a phlegmatic ladies' man from the Deep South. The two watch the rise and fall of their fortunes over the next 15 years or so, during which Chess buys Cadillacs for all his stars who bring home the bacon.

There is Little Walter (Columbus Short), a gifted harmonica player defined by the unfortunate combination of being nuts and carrying a gun. There is Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker), an arrogant crooner who challenges Waters' popularity and resents Chess' role as the white handler of an all-black stable. There is Chuck Berry (Mos Def), the first hit-maker to reveal that rock and roll could promote desegregation. And there is Etta James (Beyoncé Knowles), the lone female star who mesmerizes Chess with her honeyed voice and penchant for heartbreak and heroin. In the background, of course, are the run-of-the-mill Women Who Love Their Men Even Though They Shouldn't.

The music of Cadillac Records is performed by the actors with admirable skill. Their acting isn't bad either, it's just that no one is able to develop a presence as an individual rather than somebody who was there when X happened (this single was cut, this meeting took place, this tragedy occurred that music aficionados have long heard about). The most interesting parts for a non-aficionado like me reference how influential these artists were at a time of entwined musical and social revolution. Writer/director Darnell Martin implies that plagiarism by white bands such as The Beach Boys might not have happened if the ripped-off parties hadn't been black. The punchline to that part of the story — that two of Chess' artists won plagiarism suits and all of them, including Chess, were eventually inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — is a satisfying bit of retrospect. But the jumble of incidents that accompanied or preceded history being made do not round out a whole film.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.