Get on up: Review

Get on up starts with James Brown walking through a hall in one of his concerts, then with a non-linear chronology it shows different moments of James Brown’s life, for example when he travelled to Vietnam with The Famous Flames, which was his band; or James Brown’s parents’ marital problems, after that the film shows how Bobby Byrd and Brown formed the band; also the film tells the story when Joe Brown, James’ father, left him to join the army.

The film is a biographical film about James Brown’s life; it was directed by Tate Taylor. The main actors are Chadwick Boseman as James Brown, Nelsan Ellis as Bobby Byrd, Dan Aykroyd as Ben Bart, Viola Davis as Susie Brown, Keith Robinson as Baby Roy, and Octavia Spencer as Aunt Honey. Its debut in United States was on August 1^st, 2014.

As I said before, the story is told in a nonlinear way, and for me sometimes it is very confusing; the time of the story changes a lot and sometimes it is in the 1960s then in the 1930s and then again in 1960s, this non-linear story can confuse but it does not mean that the film is not interesting.

In my opinion the film is a good representation of James Brown’s Life; it shows us different aspects of his life that probably many people do not know, maybe with a chronological order it should be easier to understand and also more interesting than it is now.

About the cast I think the producer did a very good job choosing those actors, for example in the case of Chadwick Boseman, in the way he danced, in the way he moved and also in the way he acted, he represented perfectly how James Brown was, for me it was amazing that the actor danced as good as James Brown did.

There are just two things that I do not like about the movie: The non-linear narrative, and that sometimes James Brown ‘talked’ to the viewers; but in spite of that I completely recommend the movie because the actors are very good, and the story is pretty creative and representative of James’ life.