PREMISE
The story of how reggae icon Bob Marley overcame adversity, and the journey behind his revolutionary music.
THE GOOD STUFF
KINGSLEY F****** BEN-ADIR- My goodness gracious. Ben-Adir gives an absolutely towering performance here. Ben-Adir is an absolute joy to watch playing Bob Marley with exactly the right sense of exuberance. This does not feel like a caricature whatsoever. His performance is that of a man who not only put the work in to learn about the character but of a man who seems to be genuinely a super fan of the person he’s portraying.
Bob Marley died before I was born. He’s on that list of people dead or alive who I would have loved to have seen live. I would love to know the opinion of someone who did and saw this movie. I would love to hear their opinions on what they see from Ben-Adir. He is f****** incredible.
THE (Kinda) BAD STUFF
THE PATOIS- These Jamaican accents are thicker than oatmeal, and that is both wonderful and not-so-wonderful all at the same time. Admittingly, I do not have the ear to clearly decipher what heavy thick Jamaican accents are saying. The words come out so fast and the euphemisms are damn near impossible for me to catch a lot of the time. Not to say that I didn’t understand what was coming out but I was working maybe four or five seconds behind the dialogue in just translating what I heard in my head. I kind of think that’ll be the main complaint coming out of this film.
You ever just watched a British film and tried to keep up with the thick accents only to stop, turn on the captions, and follow along while reading because it’s all just going too fast? That is certainly the case with this film.
THE (actual) BAD STUFF
THE RUNNING TIME- This movie is 105 minutes. The audacity to think that you can tell the story of such a complex figure, who to this day is the figurehead of reggae music… It’s pretty insane. I can’t think of a musical biopic of such an important artist that is this short. And because of that, we’re skipping a lot of stuff and we’re glancing over very very important events, relationships, and culturally significant moments.
The film Bohemian Rhapsody (which is almost 30 minutes longer) has now become notorious for lying about certain events in the band Queen’s history for dramatic effect. I’ve come to the point where I don’t know what’s worse, lying about when certain events occurred in a longer film (as is the case mostly involving Bohemian Rhapsody) or just omitting them all together in a shorter film as it is done here.
THE UGLY STUFF
BAD HABITS- One love starts off with a spark, but ends up plunging into the regular biopic rhythms that a lot of other non-satisfying biopics tend to have. The great thing about a film like maestro for example, is that that film is aware that the most important thing about the musical biopic is covering its subject and not trying to highlight the art that’s already had its impact on the world while keeping the most interesting thing about the subject’s personal life at arm’s reach. One love does this, all the while hammering you over the head with the Marley classics in a very annoying way.
Yes, Marley and his band were ironically singing “I Shot the Sheriff” before the Bob Marley assassination attempt in 1975, so you have to show that, right? However, the subtlety becomes laughable from there:
*Show Bob Marley at a good point in his life in a montage… “JamminG” starts to play.
*Rita Marley almost gets killed during the assassination attempt… “No woman no cry” starts to play.
*Kids need to be calmed down after witnessing a shooting… Marley sings “three little birds” to the kids.
*Somebody who wronged Marley in the past asks for forgiveness… And you guessed it, “redemption song” starts to play.
That kind of on-the-nose s*** is what the bad musical biopics do. Good ones like Bird, Walk the line, the doors, ray, and even 8 Mile more or less do this kind of a thing at a moderate pace to place themselves in the musical category in a way. Marley’s amazing songs feel like placeholders in this film and it’s quite the annoying thing.
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There’s a two-plus hour documentary called Marley (on Amazon Prime right now) that really goes into detail about why he became such a beacon of Hope for that nation. Perhaps this is a hot take that is misinformed, but the story of Bob Marley’s importance to Jamaica (as opposed to the rest of the world) is a far more interesting and poignant story. A story this movie should have tried to tell a little bit better.
BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE is in theaters now
