I would have never heard about this movie if there hadn’t have been such a big to-do over Beyonce singing Etta James’ “At Last” for the Inaugural Ball. Apparently Etta James wasn’t so pleased that Ms. Knowles was covering her song. This bit of gossip was not too newsworthy to me until I found out that Beyonce had played Etta in this movie called Cadillac Records. Since I like Etta James’ music, I thought it was at least worth a rental from Netflix.
Turns out that “Cadillac Records” is really about Chess Records, a studio on Chicago’s south side that was one of the birth places of rock-n-roll (”Cadillac Records” seems to be a nickname because the owner often paid his artists by buying them a Cadillac). The studio was run by Leonard and Phil Chess and featured artists like Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf and Etta James. So the movie is their story, with some liberties taken. One of which is that only one Chess brother is represented. Another is that many famous artists who also cut records at Chess weren’t even mentioned in the film, one of whom was Bo Diddley. Apparently the producers were on a tight budget and had to leave certain things out. After watching the film one has to wonder if the life of Diddley (who died last year at the age of 79) did not provide enough drama to be featured in Cadillac Records.
Still these complaints are rather nitpicky when you think about the stellar casting of the film. Adrian Brody as Chess, Cedric the Entertainer playing songwriter Willie Dixon, Beyonce, Mos Def as Chuck Berry and Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters are the top names. Columbus Short, who I am not familiar with, plays Little Walter and steals just about every scene he’s in. There’s fantastic chemistry between Knowles and Brody, as well as between Brody and Wright. But where you easily merge Beyonce and Wright into their characters, it’s not that easy with Brody. He’s supposed to be a Polish immigrant, so why does he sound like he’s from Queens, NY? And was it too much for Brody to get a damn 1950s style haircut? No honey, just slicking it back doesn’t work. How very ironic to watch the “making of” documentary to see writer Darnell Martin brag about wanting everything to look like the period they’re working in, but there sits Brody with his too long hair!
The beginning of the film is promising and easy to follow. We see Chess and Waters get together and start the label, Little Walter comes in right after Waters. From there things get murky. “Howlin’ Wolf” is introduced, but the character is not very well fleshed out. It seems he has no purpose in the film except as a nemesis to Waters. Poor Chuck Berry gets shunted aside so that more time can be spent on Etta James. Mos Def is a fantastic Chuck Berry, it’s too bad we don’t see more of him.
Speaking of great actors, Jeffrey Wright has to be one of the best character actors we have in films. He was fantastic in Angels in America and more recently as Gen. Colin Powell in Oliver Stone’s W.He should have gotten some sort of Oscar nod for his role as Muddy Waters.
The DVD has all kinds of extras, from deleted scenes to two “making of” featurettes. Almost the entire cast participates in the first one, which tells you the labor of love that went into the making of this film (on the other hand, Sean Penn was nowhere to be found on the Milk DVD featurette.)
So while there were some holes in the timelines and the plot was at times confusing, I recommend this film to anyone who is interested in music history, or even if you just dig the ’50s.
Maybe someone will come back and give Bo Diddley a movie all his own. We can only hope that if Adrien Brody reprises his role as Leonard Chess that he’ll take time out from his busy schedule to get the right hair cut.