Get On Up “Loud and Proud”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

GET ON UP is the story of James Brown, known at various times in his life and career as The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, The Godfather of Soul, or as he preferred to be called by strangers and even friends, “Mr. Brown.”

Brown is played remarkably by Chadwick Boseman, expect him to be nominated for an Academy Award in 2015, and don’t be surprised if he wins one for Best Actor.

TIME magazine said that “From 1958 to 1986, [Brown] landed 116 singles on BILLBOARD’s Hot 100 singles chart, and their irresistible grooves have since been sampled on about 4,000 songs.”

Mick Jagger is one of the producers of the film, and he has said that he copied a lot of Brown’s moves for his performances from what Brown did so remarkably on stage.

Incidentally, one of the most interesting scenes in the movie is when Brown and the Rolling Stones appeared together during a performance and Brown’s manager, played by Dan Aykroyd, tells Brown that the Stones will be has-beens within a year.

When Brown walks off stage after his performance, he passes Jagger, who has been watching Brown from the wings, and Brown says, “Welcome to America.”

The movie jumps around in time to show Brown’s life as a little boy being abused by his father and abandoned by his mother to how he developed an interest in music to how he formed his first singing group, The Famous Flames, with his lifelong friend Bobby Byrd to his many brushes with the law and many relationships with women, but mostly to his many performances of his most famous songs in various performances in various locations around the world.

The editing is almost surreal when it cuts between performances of the same song at different times and locations.

We see how Brown overcame the rules that had already been written in the music business and how they mistreated Black performers, we see how Brown broke away from the Famous Flames and became his own star performer, and we see how Brown mistreated his own band and those around him who loved him.

But most of all, we see outstanding performances that earned him the right to be called “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.”

GET ON UP can bring tears to your eyes.