Jennifer Hudson tries her best with a disappointingly rote retread through cliches of a well-worn genre
Every so often, usually while watching a biopic about a troubled musical genius, a film critic will be seized by a sense of futility deeper than the normal, low-burning futility that comes with the professional territory. Regardless of how specifically or how many times we catalogue the cliches of this rigid subgenre, the writers and directors upholding it continue to adhere to a faulty formula as if these plot beats had been laid out by scripture. No amount of spilled ink can stop the childhood traumas cuing up adult dysfunction in an overly tidy pop-psych equation; the cameos from famous faces announced by name to ensure everyone’s recognition; the unnerving recreations of iconic moments or works that succeed only in making viewers want to revisit the genuine article; or the intelligence-insulting postscripts implying that no one would otherwise know what became of these inescapably famous people.
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Matt Damon vehicle hiding inside an action thriller