Remember Stars in Their Eyes? The telly show with Matthew Kelly?There’s more than just a touch of Stars in Their Eyes about Back to Black, Sam Taylor-Johnson’s new biopic of that most talented, most troubled of singers, Amy Winehouse.
‘Tonight, Matthew,’ its lead actress, Marisa Abela, seems to say, ‘I’m going to be Amy Winehouse.’ The same uplifted hairdo. The same lip piercing and tattoos. The same London drawl and jazzy singing voice.
Amy Winehouse biopic Back To Black failed to live up to its promise to celebrate the late singer’s music
The film follows Amy’s becardiganed early years to her mid-noughties pomp to her alcohol-induced demise
It’s a careful act of mimicry. At times, it’s even an impressive one. There are some scenes, such as a recreation of a raucous performance at Glastonbury in 2008, that sell you on the notion that maybe, just maybe… if you squint… this is her?
But there’s a big problem: it ain’t actually Amy. This 90 per cent facsimile just draws attention to the missing 10 per cent: the wayward genius of the original artist.
There’s no genius here. Just Saturday-night impersonation.
You might be able to do it with, say, Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald. But Winehouse died just over a decade ago. We’re not comparing this movie with old newsreel footage, but with the relatively dustless corners of our own memories and music collections.
Does this mean that Back to Black was doomed to fail from the start? Perhaps. But the filmmakers made sure of it when they actually shot the thing.
All of the usual sins of biopics are committed here – only more so. We rush so quickly from Winehouse’s becardiganed early years to her mid-noughties pomp to her alcohol-induced demise that we barely get to know her and those around her.
Instead: a rapid tick-box exercise. Her dad Mitch (Eddie Marsan) driving a black cab? Check. Drinks in the Dublin Castle in Camden? Check.
An origin story for the beehive? Ugh. Check. Even the death of Winehouse’s beloved grandmother, Cynthia – played with grace and wit by Lesley Manville, in by far the film’s best performance – is merely a shot or two in yet another lazy montage.
Abela’s Winehouse pictured with her on-screen father Mitch (left) played by Eddie Marsan
It spends most of its time forcing her to make goo-goo eyes at her one-time husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, played by Jack O’Connell (pictured)
It also includes the death of Winehouse’s beloved grandmother, Cynthia (pictured together)
And Back to Black certainly skips over the really bad stuff.
At one point, Abela’s Winehouse praises her favourite writers, Charles Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson, for never shying away from the ugly truth. A pity, then, that the film doesn’t live up to the same ideal.
We always seem to catch up with its subject après-bender or post-fight. Never in the moment itself. It’s like a perfume ad’s idea of addiction and mental illness; soft-focussed and pretty.
Back to Black’s worst offence, though, is that it breaks its own promise to concentrate on – and celebrate – Winehouse’s music.
Instead, it spends most of its time forcing her to make goo-goo eyes at her one-time husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, here played as a cheeky monkey with a bit of a coke habit by the overly buff Jack O’Connell.
So if they try to make you watch this movie, say: no, no, no. Much better to put on Back to Black, the album, or the song, and remember what really made Amy a star.
Back To Back is released in UK cinemas on Friday April 12
Back To Back is released in UK cinemas on Friday April 12
