Back to Black

Grade: C

I remember where and when I heard Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” for the first time. It was December 2007. I was on my way to work in the middle of the night – sometime in the 1:00 hour (I delivered newspapers). The song came on the radio, and I was immediately struck by it. “What is this? This is the coolest!” I loved the musical Motown throwback contrasted with the lyrics about resisting getting treatment for addiction. It gave me a leg up on the scene in Back to Black when they try to make Amy go to rehab. I knew how that would play out.

Winehouse died from alcohol poisoning – after what had been a significant amount of time sober – in the summer of 2011. She was 27. The Camden Town native rose to stardom with the release of her first album in 2003. Her second album, Back to Black, earned her 5 Grammy Awards. Marisa Abela (Teen Talk Barbie from Barbie) is excellent as Amy. She has a great voice (as Amy did), and a strong confident presence. It’s one of the better music biopic performances I’ve seen. It actually felt like a character, and not just an impersonation. I’d support the idea of any award nominations she might get, but I have a feeling Back to Black won’t be our next Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman. It will likely go the way of Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody and Bob Marley: One Love.

The movie has blinders on. It spends most of its time on Amy’s drugging and especially the drinking that did her in – not enough about her life or creative process. Plot details I wanted more clarity on are frustratingly glossed over. In a scene at the zoo with her on-again-off-again-boyfriend-turned-husband-turned-ex, she tells him she’s pregnant, then there’s absolutely no follow-up. Was she joking? Did she lose the baby? I missed something, apparently. Also, she knocks out a tooth on one of her binges. There’s one quick “sneeze and you’ll miss it” line regarding it, then after a couple of scenes, she has a beautiful full mouth again. Can you hook a brother/sister up with a few seconds at the dentist – maybe during one of the standard biopicky montages?

It’s strange and bittersweet to think that if she had kept taking good care of herself and hadn’t relapsed, we wouldn’t have this movie right now, because we’d still have Amy. That’s another reason why I wish she had hung in there, other than the obvious one. An awesome leading performance isn’t enough to save an otherwise lifeless, rote biopic with a one-track mind. If they try to make you go to Back to Black, you know what to say.

Grade: C