sanjin_9632 This is Boseman's best so far. I saw Message From The King like a week ago and this is far better since the role demands more and Boseman pretty much nailed it. Every role is cast perfectly. Something I can seldomly say about most movies. Especially Nelsan Ellis as Bobby Byrd and Craig Robinson as Maceo Parker are worthy mentions. Yeah, JB did drugs, beat women and probably even worse, but I had the pleasure of seeing him perform in Vienna a year and a half before he died, and I gotta admit, even though the guy was about 70, he still had it. The audience wasn't worthy of a JB, the Godfather Of Soul, Mr. Dynamite, Mr. Funk, since there were only about a 1000 people in a venue where 3000 would fit. JB represents something most people from my generation can't even comprehend. I'm not sure I fully understand it. A shiny figure from a past era, when being a musician, entertainer had a slightly different tone to it, a different meaning maybe even.This movie is very much entertaining, like the man himself and if even half of it is true in some way or another, this definitely deserves a good rating 7.5/10

M AR Before watching this I had no idea who James Brown was. I heard the name before but could not identify which songs were his (Although I have heard a lot of his songs on commercials and sampled in newer songs).This man was crazy as hell. I enjoyed the movie.James Brown seemed like a jerk.Its cool mick jagger was in the movie and he produced it.Good acting. Good music.

Turfseer "Get on Up," a biopic about "James Brown," also known as "The Godfather of Soul," covers many of the bases of the soul singer's life but ultimately must be categorized as "hagiography," given its overall sanitized depiction. The narrative begins with a revealing low point toward the end of Brown's life: he terrorizes participants at an insurance seminar by firing a shotgun at the ceiling of his own conference center, after discovering someone has used his private bathroom. Director Tate Taylor then begins jumping around in non- chronological order after that to depict events in Brown's life. As a result, we never get a sense of Brown's decline and (dare I say it?), fall into mediocrity. Taylor on the other hand is content to put Brown up on a pedestal, concluding that he was a seminal figure in American musical history. Despite its shortcomings, there's a lot to like about "Get on Up." First and foremost there's Chadwick Boseman's excellent performance. While he lip syncs the original recordings, Boseman manages to capture Brown's mannerisms, including his spectacular dance moves along with conveying the soul singer's controlling nature. The scenes of Brown's childhood and adolescence explain exactly why he became the "not so nice guy" of his adulthood. Abandoned by his mother and abused by a cruel father, Brown found that he had to fend for himself. The difficulties of growing up Black in the pre-Civil Rights era deep South in 30s and 40s is ably conveyed by Taylor who shows Brown participating in a boxing match as a child for the amusement of well-to-do racist Southerners. Brown finds little supervision from his Aunt who is involved in running the local Bordello. In a powerful scene, young Brown steals a pair of shoes from a lynching victim. Finally, after stealing a suit, Brown receives a harsh and unjust prison sentence of 5 to 13 years but miraculously is rescued by Bobbie Byrd, whose church-going family sponsors him as a repentant border in their home. Despite their generosity, Brown can't keep his hands off one of Byrd's sisters, who he has sex with in one of the upstairs bedrooms.The narrative remains gripping as we learn how Brown's career took off. First there were gigs with "The Famous Flames," Byrd's gospel group where Brown developed his original style. We get to see a young Little Richard fabulously played by a flamboyant Brandon Mychal Smith performing a song before the Flames go on in a club. Later the group is signed by King Records and Brown teams up with agent Ben Bart (nicely played by Dan Aykroyd.) Bart is adroit in business and shows Brown the ropes. We see how expendable the rest of the Flames are when the record company makes it clear that they're only side men to Brown—the main act. As a result they all quit and Brown forms a new band with new players.Somewhere in the second half of the film, the films' scenarists have a hard time acknowledging the depth of James Brown's shortcomings. Perhaps the best scene is when Brown arrogantly and cruelly curses out his supporting players who all resign in protest. The film leaves out how earlier Brown encouraged some of his supporting players in their careers—but then tried to sabotage them by calling DJ's, telling them not to play their music, after some of them displayed some initial success.Politically Brown supported Richard Nixon and spoke fondly of Strom Thurmond—these facts are left out of the film as not to tarnish the Brown legacy. But perhaps the most disingenuous aspect of the narrative is that Brown's drug usage and instances of domestic violence are downplayed. Dressing up as Santa and giving money to children at Christmas time might have endeared some members of the public to Brown but those who knew the entire back story could not have admired such a controlling and mean spirited individual.My theory is that Brown became popular not because of his songs but due to his talent as a performer. On the other hand, Chuck Berry's rock n' roll songs (which also came from standard blues) were far more clever and catchy than most of the stuff from Brown's R&B catalog. Brown did have an excellent voice but relied on repetition which was good for showcasing his excellent dance moves but few of his songs--except for a few hits such as "I Got You (I feel Good), were all that memorable. Television in the 60s put James Brown on the map, but as he grew older, the next generation lost interest in him. No longer the center of attention, Brown turned to drugs and tarnished his legacy through his cruel and boorish behavior, minimized here in this screenplay.I would still recommend seeing this rather disjointed biopic. The main facts of James Brown's life are depicted in a straightforward manner and there are moments here and there, that are quite powerful. Nonetheless the filmmakers tendency to put James Brown on a pedestal makes him out to be far more important in popular music history than he actually was.

Wizard-8 "Get on Up" didn't really set the box office on fire when it was released to theaters, and I think I have some idea as to why. Before I get into that, I should point out that it's far from the worst biopic ever made by Hollywood. Actor Chadwick Boseman does give a very good performance as James Brown, successfully convincing the audience that the Godfather of Soul had both a good side and a much darker side. Some credit for that also has to go to the script, which does not whitewash the legend's sometimes questionable behavior; the first real scene of the movie depicts the event that landed Brown in jail in 1988. And the movie, despite running over two hours long, is never boring; every scene is interesting in one aspect or another. And of course, there is the music, which is of course wonderful to hear.Yet despite what I wrote above, at the end of the movie I felt somewhat unsatisfied. The movie doesn't go into depth with Brown in some key aspects. We learn almost nothing about his marriage and his children, his jump into sudden fame and fortune is never really depicted (the movie suddenly jumps ahead several years!), his relationship with Aykroyd's character isn't given that much more depth, his problems with the taxman are mentioned in one scene and then it NEVER mentioned again, and his 1988 arrest is shown but it's never detailed what exactly happened afterwards. It's also confusing that the organization of scenes (the movie doesn't always play in order) doesn't make sense, like when Brown is suddenly reunited with his long absent mother.So what do we have here? Well, it's a movie that will appeal to some people, but not all. If you sit down to watch the movie simply to be entertained, you may find it accomplishes that. But if you really want to learn about the Godfather of Soul and what shaped him and made him tick, you would probably be better reading a biography of the man.