Click here to copy URL

Respect

2021

Liesl Tommy

Jennifer Hudson, Leroy McClain, Forest Whitaker, Tate Donovan ...

5.8

1,341

Drama The life story of legendary R&B singer, Aretha Franklin, following the rise of Aretha Franklin’s career from a child singing in her father’s church’s choir to her international superstardom.

	Author	Review
United States	Kate Erbland IndieWire	"Star Jennifer Hudson hits a few high notes in a film beset by the usual biopic tropes and shortcuts, few of which allow for a deep enough look at the Queen of Soul."	NEU
United States	Peter Debruge Variety	"[Hudson] looks and sounds great in the role, but this overly respectful biopic steers clear of revealing the traumas that shaped the soul legend."	NEU
United States	David Rooney The Hollywood Reporter	"An intimate gift of love, rich in complexity, spirituality, Black pride and feminist grit (...) The ageless music, of course, is the galvanizing force, but it’s the personal struggle behind it that makes the story so affecting."	POS
United Kingdom	Tim Grierson Screendaily	"An overstuffed but undernourished portrait of the Queen of Soul (...) although Hudson has a powerful voice, she can’t come close to embodying the richness and range of Franklin’s style."	NEU
United Kingdom	Charles Bramesco The Guardian	"Jennifer Hudson tries her best with a disappointingly rote retread through cliches of a well-worn genre (...) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"	NEG
United States	Brian Truitt USA Today	"Jennifer Hudson stuns with her performance singing and inhabiting the life of musical royalty, even if the new Aretha Franklin biopic leans conventionally commonplace (...) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"	NEU
United States	Odie Henderson rogerebert.com	"It’s a damn good performance and this is a damn entertaining movie (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Mary Sollosi Entertainment Weekly	"Respect generally hits the notes it needs to, both musically and historically, but comes up short in what should be the most crucial ingredient — soul"	NEU
United States	Elizabeth Weitzman The Wrap	"It’s more effective as a jukebox musical than a character piece, but the central performance and those amazing songs pull it all together"	NEU
Canada	Peter Martin Screen Anarchy	"Catching fire whenever music erupts, 'Respect' is otherwise a muddled mess (...) [It] follows the faded pattern of a conventional bio-pic storyline"	NEG
Australia	Stephen A Russell Time Out Australia	"Hudson goes all in in a performance that is no mere mimicry, even if the film's less impressive (...) It's entertaining enough, but both Hudson and Franklin deserve just a little a bit better than that (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Jason Bailey The Playlist	"'Respect' suffers from the condition wherein each scene has to contain so much information that every line of dialogue becomes an exposition dump (...) there’s little in 'Respect' that one couldn’t glean from a Wikipedia scan"	NEU
United States	Keith Watson Slant	Respect truly immerses us in the creative process (...) It’s often hard not to feel like the film is simply checking off boxes, a quality that’s exacerbated by Tommy’s flat direction (...) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"	NEU
United Kingdom	Helen O'Hara Empire	"A perfectly serviceable biopic with good performances, which goes some way to explaining Franklin’s genius as a musician and a star, but one that isn't nearly as transcendent as its subject deserves (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	John Serba Decider	"'Respect' is too rote in too many ways to justify a recommendation. Hudson does enough justice to the music that her and Aretha's biggest appreciators may be justified in watching it, though"	NEU
United States	Peter Travers ABC News	"Hudson has captured the soul of Aretha without losing her own radiant essence as a performer. That's why 'Respect' —for all its flaws— emerges as a stirring tribute to both their talents"	POS

Return to movie

We encourage you to check the reviews' original sources. Intellectual property rights of these reviews belong to their authors and/or the correspondent media from which they have been extracted. If you'd like to help us to add more reviews to your favorite movies, just send us a message.