Cadillac Records: Volume on HIGH

Cadillac Records

This could have been a great movie, really awesome, but it is not. Largely to blame is the refusal to underplay just about anything.

I don’t know any of the actual historical facts behind this story, but even the fictional content in the film could have been executed with much more grace. My comments only reflect what I got out of the fictional movie.

The story is of the rise and fall of Chess Records, a record label that hit it big off blues music sung by black people at a time when cops could still call someone the n-word without it being that strange.

There are great characters.

Muddy Waters, a former sharecropper turned lady-bedding blues singer, is played by Jeffrey Wright (a magnficent actor, always nice to see him getting work). Wright does right what the rest of the cast does wrong.

He plays a real person. He is subtle. His emotions are not telegraphed. He doesn’t over-pronounce his facial expressions. He doesn’t overdramatize his “big moments”. In short, he’s Jeffrey Wright. The guy knows what he’s doing.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Columbus Short plays Little Walter. He yells. He makes big facial expressions. It’s a noisy performance, and not in the appropriate way reflecting the character.

Somewhere in the middle performance-wise Beyonce tries to portray Etta James as a troubled but talent singer, she still has not really learned how to deliver lines as a character, she would fit right in if this were a musical.

Adrien Brody is perfectly fine as the maestro behind the label, not sensational, but by no means bad.

The whole story approach is more in tune with Short’s performance than Wright’s. When Muddy is on the street early in his career a man approaches him out of the blue and warns him, “I done lost two daughters to blues men.” Really? Would this EVER happen? It’s not even like he was playing a nightclub at the time, he was on the street!

There are other fairly melodramatic developments which generally speaking emphasize a sense of spectacle over realism that undermines what could have been a great drama.

Who is also awesome in it

Mos Def plays Chuck Berry with his typical goofiness, but shows the restraint some of the other actors lack, particularly when he calmly complains about white people stealing his music (he’s right).

What’s kind of weird

It seems like everyone is sweating throughout this entire movie. They couldn’t spot somebody a fan? Had deodorant not been invented yet (I actually don’t know the answer to that one).

Art imitating life

In Dreamgirls Beyonce’s character wanted to take a gritty indie role that’s not just fluff. In Cadillac Records she sorta does.