Starring Robert Townsend, Leon Robinson, Michael Wright, and Tico Wells
Directed by Robert Townsend
Music and Lyrics by various
This week, we dive into Black History Month with reviews of biographies of fictional and real R&B stars. We begin with the fictional group. Doo wop and early R&B groups were at the height of their success in the early 1960's, as the Civil Rights Movement gathered steam. If young men weren't creating groups in garages and on street corners, they were starting record companies to showcase those garage bands. Townsend was coming off a success with the 1987 stand-up comedy film Eddie Murphy Raw. Keenan Ivory Waynas produced Raw and wrote Townsend's first movie Hollywood Shuffle and In Living Color, the satirical variety show that was in it's second year when this debuted. Is this as much fun as In Living Color, or should it be thrown off a balcony? Let's begin backstage at a band contest in Columbus, Ohio and find out...
The Story: Brothers Donald "Duck" (Townsend) and J.T (Robinson) Matthews and their friends Eddie King Jr. (Wright), Anthony "Choirboy" Stone (Wells), and Terrence "Dresser" Williams (Harry J. Lennox) are members of the doo-wop group the Heartbeats. They don't win the contest, but they do manage to impress manager Jimmy Potter (Chuck Patterson). He takes them on when they fail to win another contest and introduces them to Ernest "Sarge" Johnson (Harold Nicholas), who redoes their choreography. Potter's not crazy about them signing with corrupt Big Red Davis (Hawthorne James) and his record company after his independently published single is a hit and they finally win a contest, but no one else will take them.
They become an instant success, despite a difficult tour with bad conditions and racism in the south. Eddie, who was never the most stable to begin with, handles it the worst. He takes to drugs and heavy drinking, to the point where his girlfriend Baby Doll (Troy Beyer) breaks up with him. Jimmy and the other Heartbeats are more concerned about his deteriorating performances. Eddie's worried that Jimmy intends to replace him and has Big Red cut him out. Jimmy retaliates by threatening to go to the cops with all of Red's shady activities, which promptly ends with Big Red's men running him down in front of his wife Eleanor (Diahann Carroll).
Eddie is horrified and guilt-ridden by his part in everything and does end up quitting the band. They replace him with Michael "Flash" Turner (John Canada Terrell), a far more flamboyant singer. Their success comes to an abrupt end when Flash decides to go solo and Duck and J.T have a falling out over Duck's fiancee (Carla Brothers). They don't speak to each other again until 1991, when they all finally admit that, even with all the trouble, they've never forgotten the one thing that always meant the most to all of them...singing and dancing together.
The Song and Dance: There's some terrific performances in this look at the darker side of the 60's music scene. Some of it may hit harder in today's racial climate, like the Heartbeats being furious over four white performers appearing on the cover of their album and their treatment during that tour. Carroll and Patterson come off best as the manager hoping that these guys won't leave him in the dust if they make it and his supportive wife. Wright's performance can be overwrought at times, especially in the second half, but his over-the-top delivery especially works. When the guys see him again as a poor drug addict, he's so desperate, you can practically feel it coming off him. The colorful costumes and sets do well representing the mid-60's through the early 70's, especially those sharp primary-colored suits and narrow-brimmed fedoras most of the men seem to favor.
The Numbers: We open at that contest with one girl band doing "I Never Felt This Good" and Baby Doll singing "I Love Joey." The next number gives us a glimpse of Flash's intense style that'll later take over the group with "Are You Ready for Me?" The Heartbeats finally debut with "Nothing But Love." Bird and the Midnight Falcons sing "Baby Stop Running Around" to their adoring fans who have been instructed to cheer them and boo the Heartbeats...until they hear the Heartbeats' "9:20 Special" and "A Heart Is a House for Love," and one girl literally faints into Eddie's arms.
Duck spends all night writing a new song, but it's his little sister (Tressa Thomas) who helps him put "We Haven't Finished Yet" together. (Thomas is such a scene stealer here, I wish her brothers could have found a way to get her into the group.) Duck and J.T hear "Nothing but Love" on the radio even before they wake up, ending with dancing joyously with their many siblings. Weeks on the road playing terrible venues and staying in dirty hotels takes its toll on "Nights Like This," which ends with the guys tearing their clothes apart in a free-for-all....but the tearing goes over so well, it's incorporated into the act.
The Four Tops' hit "Same Old Song" gives us a montage of the Heartbeats' success, from the covers of Time and Esquire to appearances on American Bandstand. We hear Flash performing "Down for the Count" with his original band, right as Eddie's life starts to go seriously south. After Eddie leaves, Flash finds himself "In the Middle" of the band's other drama. Jennifer Holliday (who starred in the original 1984 Dreamgirls on Broadway) performs a searing "Amazing Grace" at Jimmy's funeral. "Just In Case" proves to be the swan song for Flash and the Heartbeats before they finally disband. Eddie and Baby Doll finally get a number together in the 90's as part of Anthony's choir, "I Feel Like Going On." "We Haven't Finished Yet" is reprised in the finale by Patti LaBelle with Billy Valentine and Thomas.
What I Don't Like: This movie is cliched to high heck. It's basically the male flip side of Dreamgirls, with a lot of the same done-to-death complications. No wonder this wasn't a hit in 1991. We've seen it all before, and will again many times. Things get a lot less interesting after Jimmy's death and Eddie's involvement. The last half-hour with the brothers fighting over the same woman comes off as dull soap opera claptrap and makes the movie a lot longer than it needs to be.
The music that everyone makes such a fuss about is derivative and boring, especially compared to the real vintage R&B from the groups who inspired this that plays throughout the film. (And why use "Same Old Song" for the rise to success montage? Wouldn't it have made more sense to have a song by the Heartbeats, let them actually show why they became so popular so fast?)
The Big Finale: This seems to be one of those things people either love for the decent performances and numbers, or hate for the overwrought melodrama and inconsistent tone. It's still worth checking out at least once this Black History Month, if only to see where you stand.
Home Media: Easily found on DVD and streaming.
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