Respect (2021)
(On Cable TV, September 2022) By the time of her death in 2018, Aretha Franklin had an enviable, even monumental reputation—the “Queen of Soul” had sold dozens of millions of records, spawned a few instantly recognizable pop hits, had a number in The Blues Brothers and sung at Obama’s presidential inauguration, among many more achievements. But her path to stardom started miserably, and Respect takes a sometimes-overlong look at those early years (albeit skipping over moments such as the birth of her first two sons when she was 12 and 15). Jennifer Hudson plays the role, and it’s difficult to imagine anyone doing a better job at it, combining some dramatic skill with the necessary singing prowess. Hudson makes the film feel better than it is: While Respect does most things right, it also sticks close to the standard biopic template, avoiding (perhaps out of hagiographic deference) any deep examination of its subject, and losing itself in subplots and tangents that make its running time balloon without bringing much more to the result. As in many recent biopics, the film spends a lot of time on the making of its title track—and that’s one stop along the 145-minute running time that I don’t mind at all. At other times, however, the film feels like a TV series cut short or a biopic running long: an unenviable middle ground that does its subject scant justice. It’s more accurate to say that I tolerated Respect more than I enjoyed or disliked it: Hudson makes it hard to be overly critical of the result, but there’s no doubt it could have been better, maybe if the film didn’t overly respect its subject so much.