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The reviews are in for the Michael Jackson biopic, Michael — and it’s total carnage on Rotten Tomatoes.
With over 100 reviews, the movie has a disappointing 38 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, with critics negatively comparing the biopic to a “greatest hits” album.
Despite music biopic genre tropes being torn to shreds by Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Hollywood can’t get enough of music biopics, especially when they make as much money as Michael is projected to make.
That’s why the Watch With Us team has compiled a list of the four worst music biopics ever made. From Queen to Amy Winehouse, these films did a cruel disservice to the musicians they were supposed to celebrate.
4. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (2018)
Don’t let those Oscar nominations fool you — Bohemian Rhapsody has gone more the way of Crash than Moonlight when it comes to post-Oscars cultural cache. Still, at the time, many were confused, particularly by Bohemian Rhapsody’s Best Picture nomination, for a movie that generally divided critics in terms of quality. Starring Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury, Bohemian Rhapsody charts the formation of the pop-rock band Queen up through their legendary Live Aid performance, focusing on Mercury’s life and the way he bucked conventions to become a bona fide rock star.
Ultimately, Bohemian Rhapsody is as much a greatest hits movie as Michael, a superficial and sanitized look at a complex and fascinating person such as Mercury, with a script that doesn’t give his life and career what it deserves. Though the movie clinched Malek an Academy Award for Best Actor, and his performance is fine, it’s still much more of an impression of Mercury than an embodiment of him. The formulaic rise-and-fall story, significant inaccuracies and shallow depiction of Mercury’s sexuality are just a few of the film’s greatest sins.
3. ‘Back to Black’ (2024)
15 years after directing a music biopic about a controversial musician who died tragically too young, director Sam Taylor-Johnson returns to this particular genre with Back to Black, about the life and death of pop singer Amy Winehouse. Back to Black already had to contend with the excellent 2015 documentary Amy, which provides a nuanced and comprehensive look at Winehouse as a woman, an addict, a victim of exploitation and an immensely talented singer taken from the world far too soon. And Taylor-Johnson’s movie was dinged before it even hit theaters due to the casting of Industry actress Marisa Abela, who was given a prosthetic nose to play Winehouse.
The movie is widely considered to be unworthy of the star at the center of its story, covering Winehouse’s personal demons with skin-deep nuance and featuring just about every music biopic cliché in the book. Despite admittedly strong performances from Abela and Jack O’Connell, Back to Black skirts a critical eye towards anyone who isn’t the paparazzi, despite Winehouse’s father and boyfriend both playing a crucial hand in her downfall. Plus, the sensationalist nature of the movie’s final scene will likely leave a bad taste in your mouth. Back to Black is nothing more than vague and misguided.
2. ‘Stardust’ (2020)
Imagine, if you will, a biographical film about David Bowie (played by Johnny Flynn) but without any of Bowie’s iconic music. No “Moonage Daydream,” no “Starman” and no “Life on Mars.” Without the music that defined Bowie as a legendary figure in the world of rock, how do you even go about tackling his life story? Well, 2020’s Stardust certainly gave it a shot and failed miserably. Stardust was famously unable to afford the licenses necessary to obtain access to Bowie’s music catalogue, and thus, director Gabriel Range‘s film attempts to capture the nascent rocker without any of the work that made him a star.
Even though Stardust attempts to capture Bowie’s earlier life, it still depicts him going on tour for his third album, The Man Who Sold the World, so at this point, Bowie had already written tracks like “Space Oddity.” But even aside from the film’s attempt at working around its inability to feature any of its subjects’ famous songs, Stardust is incredibly bland, inauthentic and doesn’t nearly do Bowie any justice. The by-the-numbers movie is ultimately a true letdown by blandly depicting an artist who was so singular and unique.
1. ‘Nina’ (2016)
Zoe Saldaña would likely prefer Nina and its incredible 2 percent Rotten Tomatoes score to be lost to the annals of history, if not just for the poor quality of a movie about a music titan but also for the controversy it generated from casting the admittedly talented Saldana in the role of Nina Simone. Saldaña, a woman of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent, was cast to play Simone, a Black woman, and what resulted was an exceedingly eyebrow-raising use of nose prosthetics and makeup to make Saldaña’s skin closer to the color of her subject. Saldaña eventually expressed public regret for taking the role.
But beyond this major casting snafu, the movie just isn’t any good at all. Dull direction, editing and writing flatten the depiction of the chaotic period of Simone’s career that the movie attempts to cover, and you can’t help but watch Nina and get the feeling that the people behind it didn’t even understand their subject. Fans of Simone’s work — or those eager to learn more about her — would be better off watching a documentary or just reading a biography about her life. You would likely come away from Nina knowing even less about her.
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