Highly Anticipated Amy Winehouse Biopic Is Already a Critical Flop With 53% Tomatometer

Summary:

• Amy Winehouse’s career until her tragic death in 2011 has always been a tempting plot idea for many filmmakers and so far Sam Taylor-Johnson was the one who got to bring the singer’s story to big screens.
• Despite all the high expectations, the brand new biopic clearly didn’t impress critics that much and at the moment possess only 53% of score on Rotten Tomatoes.
• The first reviews were in before the movie was released in theaters, so there’s still some hope for the viewers who could save the film from being a total flop.

Amy Winehouse’s short, yet flamboyant career has always been something that allured filmmakers ever since the singer’s tragic death back in 2011. Despite a huge number of those who would love to bring Winehouse’s story to the big screens, her legacy was quickly picked up by one of her closest friends and director Sam Taylor-Johnson, notoriously known for her work on Fifty Shades of Grey.

And though the film was created by someone who knew Amy Winehouse not just from the news, it doesn’t seem to have convinced some critics in it.

The film called Back to Black, thus honoring one of Winehouse’s most famous songs, hasn’t been officially released yet — in the UK, the film will hit cinemas this Friday, and in the US on May 10 — but already got a controversial score of 53% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Despite the low rating, the reviews are mixed with ones calling Back to Black a total failure and others praising it at least in some way.

Is Back to Black Really Going to Be That Bad?

Some critics called Taylor-Johnson’s new movie “a poor piece of filmmaking” that is mostly based on the singer’s lyrics rather than her real life. Someone else claimed that the story in Taylor-Johnson’s interpretation comes in a less tragic light than it was supposed to.

Another critic compared Back to Black to Asif Kapadia’s 2015 Oscar-winning documentary Amy, saying that the former totally lacked the emotional aspect that the latter succeeded to reach.

Though not everything is as bad as it already seems to be — and the life preserver here is Marisa Abela who got to portray the legendary singer in the upcoming biopic. The critics unanimously praised her versatile dramatical performance that was complemented by fascinating scenes of her singing that, according to the professionals, sounded just as authentic as it only could.

Yet even the actress’s outstanding performance comes as a poor consolation with some critics claiming that “she is let down by a weak script that tells us even less than we already know”.

Not a very promising start for the most-anticipated biopic of the year, but we still get to see what the viewers will say.

Source: Cinemablend