![]() ![]() ![]() Most gallingly, for a film "based on a true story," there doesn't seem to be a single fact contained within writer-director Darnell Martin's ham-fisted fiction, which renders pre-rock musical history as yet another downer soap opera bloated with smack and sex and premature corpses, as though that's all that defined the period and the people. (Berry has already served as the subject for one of the better rockumentaries: Taylor Hackford's 1987 Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll.) It's all too much and not enough either make the epic the story deserves or don't bother. Still, the parade of famous faces playing famous faces overstuffs the movie with subjects deserving of features but instead treated as footnotes. (He is, however, a central player in Jerry Zaks' Who Do You Love, the other Chess bio that had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.) There's no Bo Diddley either, a woeful oversight for a film in need of his hubris and humor. In fact, Phil, who was also left out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame proceedings upon Leonard's introduction as a pioneer in 1987, is never mentioned at all. The movie is certainly being marketed as a Chess tell-all the soundtrack, due December 5, counts among its offerings Chess standards recut by the film's actors, including Jeffrey Wright's woefully slight version of Muddy Waters' "Hoochie Coochie Man" Mos Def's coy, sly take on Chuck Berry's "No Particular Place to Go" and three tracks by Beyoncé Knowles, whose purr never comes close to approximating Etta James' growl.īut in this version of the tale-told in flashback, with overwrought narration provided by Cedric the Entertainer as Chess producer, session musician and house songwriter Willie Dixon-there is no Phil Chess, only Leonard, played by an actor, Adrien Brody, who, with his anachronistically tousled hair and Forever Fonzie wardrobe, looks as much like Leonard Chess as he does, well, Howlin' Wolf. (Jennifer Hudson, mercifully, is absent this time ’round, thus sparing our eardrums of her lung-busting bellow.First, a key spoiler: Cadillac Records is not the story of Chess Records, the blues label started in Chicago in 1950 by brothers Leonard and Phil Chess that featured among its stable of artists Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and Etta James, plus many others who birthed rock 'n' roll. Where “Dreamgirls” had Jamie Foxx as an impressario based on Motown’s Berry Gordy, “Cadillac Records” has Adrien Brody as label head Leonard Chess “Dreamgirls” saw Eddie Murphy do his best James Brown imitation, and “Cadillac Records” has Jeffrey Wright morphing into Muddy Waters Beyonce Knowles had the Diana Ross role in “Dreamgirls,” and she’s back as blues diva Etta James in the new flick. With Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Etta James on their roster, Chess championed an electric urban blues sound that was destined to become the roots of rock ‘n’ roll, worshipped by people like Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Jimmy Page. After Hollywood’s huge success with “Dreamgirls,” the thinly fictionalized story of legendary soul/R&B label Motown, along comes “Cadillac Records.” This musical biopic goes one step further back in the history of black American music, and comes up with a thinly fictionalized look at legendary blues label Chess Records. ![]()
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