‘Back to Black’ review: Awful Amy Winehouse biopic gets a no, no, no!
BACK TO BLACK
Running time: 122 minutes. Rated R (drug use, language throughout, sexual content and nudity). In theaters May 17.
A basic biopic about Amy Winehouse, the eccentric singer who recorded two albums and then died of alcohol poisoning at the devastatingly young age of 27, was never going to work.
Obviously.
Hers was a whirlwind, hard-lived life that ended abruptly in tragedy.
While Winehouse was rapidly ascending to worldwide fame, she was also spiraling downward into addiction and tabloid notoriety.
The “Rehab” singer was found dead at home in 2011, having been deprived a rich and fulfilling existence. And, frankly, that quick arc does not make for a rich and fulfilling movie story.
As expected, director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s woeful film “Back to Black” doesn’t play as the gripping battle of musical genius vs. personal demons it fancies itself to be.
Instead it’s all sadness, songs and sensationalism. Look at her guzzle booze, inhale drugs and stumble around Camden. In short, more tawdry exploitation.
To which I say: No! No! No!
Winehouse, a rebel from the outset, detested the vacuous “girl power!” cries of the Spice Girls and wanted to avoid the traditional road to making it big.
Even in her relatively short career, she was a groundbreaking artistic force who heavily influenced British vocalists that came after her, like Adele.
So, to honor her, she’s been handed the most formulaic and pedestrian film you could possibly imagine.
Cut to a young Amy (Marisa Abela) singing in the living room for her adoring family in London during the Jewish holidays! Here she is getting a fateful phone call from a big-time record label. Look — there’s her picture on a double-decker bus!
We’re treated to a slideshow of predictable scenes, paired with the actors’ caked-on North London accents that could lead to a global shortage of earplugs.
Where Taylor-Johnson and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh try to bulk up the blase biopic is their “Clue”-like hunt for who to blame for Winehouse’s demise.
Is it her husband Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell), the target of the title song, who allegedly introduced her to cocaine and heroin and wanted to be with her largely for her fame?
The film’s ending rather gallingly seeks to connect Winehouse’s death to the birth of her ex’s son with his new girlfriend. Obsessed with motherhood, apparently, she dies just one scene after hearing the news.
Or is it the fault of her black-cab driver dad Mitch (Eddie Marsan), who said she didn’t need rehab when her concerned manager was begging her to go?
Her beloved grandmother Cynthia’s (Lesley Manville) death from cancer is another culprit.
Yet, nobody watching “Back to Black” has come looking for investigative journalism. Winehouse fans crave compelling insight into who Amy Winehouse was — as a person and a musician — and, for that, I’d recommend listening to her albums.
“Back to Black” is far more concerned with the Kahlua and Bailey’s in her favorite cocktail than how she wrote her fantastic songs.
What can sometimes rescue lesser films of the musician biography genre (and how many of those there are!) is a thunderous central performance. Andra Day in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” is a prime example of lifting the merely mediocre.
Abela, not so much.
What the British actress from the HBO show “Industry” brings to the table is a genuine fragility. That softness was always there in Winehouse’s music, brassy though it was, but not on the many front pages displaying her bad behavior. What Abela can’t summon — at all — is the woman’s edge.
When the actress finally dons the recognizable messy beehive and sweeping eyeliner, it’s little more than a detailed Halloween costume. She gamely does her own singing, but that too takes us out of the plot, since the voice she’s replicating is so singular. Abela can’t rise above a belabored impression.
Perhaps there was a strong movie buried here somewhere, if the filmmakers had not made so many traditional choices to dull a messy figure for Hollywood. But, for that, “Back to Black” would’ve had to have gone back to the drawing board.
