The rise and fall and the return to glory of an African American rhythm and blues singing group is presented in Robert Townsend's, The Five Heartbeats. Set between the years of 1965 and 1977, The Five Heartbeats is a biopic that tells the story of how five young black fellows catch a break and rise to fantastic fame and breathtaking stardom, only to be taken down by greed, jealousy, drugs, womanizing, and corruption from within.
Like most, I would love to like The Five Heartbeats. But it is a film made with totally simplicity. That is, the film glosses over how the Heartbeats made it so fast and how their music made them so special in the eyes of the public.
You see in the movie, the Heartbeats making the cover of Time, Newsweek, and Ebony magazine in their epic rise to stardom. Yet sad to say none of the music in the film ,despite having R&B music great Thom Bell's input, is anything special. The songs are not sung by the actors portraying the Heartbeats in the film and are poorly lip-synced by the same actors.
The movie shows the corrupt head of the record company the Heartbeats work for, "Big Red" (Hawthorne James), taken down and indicted and sentenced to prison for murdering the Heartbeats' manager, Jimmy Potter(Calvin Patterson) in a big front page headline in a newspaper. For a movie that many posters here have said portrays the reality of the music business perfectly, the fall of Big Red is a bit of a stretch. Red was supposed to be a Berry Gordy type of businessman. It would have been impossible to have pinned the murder of Potter on him and even harder to bring him down.
As for the part in the film where The Heartbeats see a new album of theirs have the picture of a white family at the beach instead of themselves on the cover, well that had to be one of the most awkward scenes in the film. Yes black R&B acts in the 1940's and the early part of the 1950's had faced a great deal of racism. But by the time the Heartbeats (Their rise started after 1965) became big why couldn't they be seen on an album cover together? Why would their own record company present this them way? What would putting an white family on an album cover of black R&B group have to do with crossover appeal? Townsend seems unable to present the problem the group supposedly had with racism properly. I mean if you make the cover of Time magazine that is crossover appeal isn't it?
When the film was made, Robert Townsend, was hot and he knew it. Hollywood Shuffle and Eddie Murphy's Raw made him a hot producer. He and Keenen Ivory Wayans wrote The Five Heartbeats. The Five Heartbeats, missed the mark by a wide margin. The film is inconsistent ,trite and a bit too long. In the long run the Heartbeats, their own stories as individuals, and their own music, couldn't and cannot match real life music groups. The story is supposed based on the real life R&B group ,the Dells, but Townsend couldn't translate their story in a competent manner.
Like most, I would love to like The Five Heartbeats. But it is a film made with totally simplicity. That is, the film glosses over how the Heartbeats made it so fast and how their music made them so special in the eyes of the public.
You see in the movie, the Heartbeats making the cover of Time, Newsweek, and Ebony magazine in their epic rise to stardom. Yet sad to say none of the music in the film ,despite having R&B music great Thom Bell's input, is anything special. The songs are not sung by the actors portraying the Heartbeats in the film and are poorly lip-synced by the same actors.
The movie shows the corrupt head of the record company the Heartbeats work for, "Big Red" (Hawthorne James), taken down and indicted and sentenced to prison for murdering the Heartbeats' manager, Jimmy Potter(Calvin Patterson) in a big front page headline in a newspaper. For a movie that many posters here have said portrays the reality of the music business perfectly, the fall of Big Red is a bit of a stretch. Red was supposed to be a Berry Gordy type of businessman. It would have been impossible to have pinned the murder of Potter on him and even harder to bring him down.
As for the part in the film where The Heartbeats see a new album of theirs have the picture of a white family at the beach instead of themselves on the cover, well that had to be one of the most awkward scenes in the film. Yes black R&B acts in the 1940's and the early part of the 1950's had faced a great deal of racism. But by the time the Heartbeats (Their rise started after 1965) became big why couldn't they be seen on an album cover together? Why would their own record company present this them way? What would putting an white family on an album cover of black R&B group have to do with crossover appeal? Townsend seems unable to present the problem the group supposedly had with racism properly. I mean if you make the cover of Time magazine that is crossover appeal isn't it?
When the film was made, Robert Townsend, was hot and he knew it. Hollywood Shuffle and Eddie Murphy's Raw made him a hot producer. He and Keenen Ivory Wayans wrote The Five Heartbeats. The Five Heartbeats, missed the mark by a wide margin. The film is inconsistent ,trite and a bit too long. In the long run the Heartbeats, their own stories as individuals, and their own music, couldn't and cannot match real life music groups. The story is supposed based on the real life R&B group ,the Dells, but Townsend couldn't translate their story in a competent manner.