You cannot condense a person’s life, and in particular any interesting life, into a two-hour movie without shortcuts and cliché storytelling tropes.
A biopic is a movie dramatizing the life of a particular person, typically a public or historical figure, according to a Feb. 25 Master Class article.
The description of biopics is a little vague but it’s about anything that has happened in real life. Biopics can focus on a person, event or political history.
When turning someone’s life into a film, it needs to be dramatic and bold. Biopics can feel like glamorized documentaries that try to convey too many things to the audience, including cliché life lessons as in last year's movie “Being the Ricardos,” a film about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
If an audience wants to know about Ball and Arnaz, viewers should watch the Amazon Prime documentary “Lucy and Desi” because it tells the love story better than the movie adaptation.
In some movies and television shows that have come out in the last couple of years, there’s been a disheartening trend with biopics.
I understand wanting to highlight older historical figures but the films about people who are still alive are corny and cringey.
I didn’t care much for the movie “King Richard” which is about how professional tennis players Venus and Serena Williams’ dad lived his life.
The performances were well done and the filmmaking is solid but it does absolutely nothing new or interesting. The film takes the story of two of the greatest tennis athletes and tells the story of their dad instead.
Why is Showtime producing a series about former first ladies Michelle Obama, Betty Ford and Eleanor Roosevelt this month?
Viola Davis is one of the greatest actresses of this generation and in the trailer for “The First Lady” she looks like she’s in a Saturday Night Live sketch imitating her.
Musical biopics like “Bohemian Rhapsody” are the worst. The last 20 minutes of the film were a carbon copy reenactment of the 1985 benefit concert “Live Aid” featuring Queen’s iconic performance.
Why not just show the real performance? The film was mainly about the music and it was well done but why did audiences need this when a documentary could have shown the real thing.
Maybe I’d like biopics if they didn't feel like the exact same movie being remade over and over again.
There are some off-the-wall biopics that I admired more because they didn’t feel generic.
Although after watching the film “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” I asked myself, “Okay, what was that for?” I thought it was really well done.
“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” is about Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, a couple who started a religious broadcasting network and pushed prosperity in a religious sense, while Jim schemed behind the scenes. From the acting to the cinematography, I didn’t mind watching it.
Jessica Chastain took home the Oscar for Best Actress for portraying Tammy Faye and it was deserved.
While I learned about evangelist Tammy Faye and it was interesting to see, I didn’t understand why this story needed to be told. I find myself asking that about nearly every biopic surrounding a public figure.
But films about events are the best kind of biopics.
“Dog Day Afternoon” directed by Sidney Lumet is a 1975 biographical crime drama about an amateur bank robber who plans a nice and simple robbery.
It’s an amazing film from stop to finish. The acting, writing and visuals are just phenomenal. It’s exactly how biopics should be done, uniquely.
A more recent 2019 biopic I found myself loving was “I, Tonya.”
The script was fantastic. Aside from using statements from interviews and documentaries, the writers add lines for each character that were impressively fitting.
The movie had a flow that wasn’t rushed but wasn’t too slow. It stayed true to the infamous scandal of Tonya Harding’s life.
When someone hears Harding’s name, I doubt they’ll think “Wow, the American figure skater who performed a triple axel successfully in a competition.”
No, they’re thinking about if she hired someone to bust Nancy Kerrigan’s knees with a baton.
It wasn’t like I was watching a biopic thinking “so, what?” It was done more like a movie, a drama comedy, which is how biopics should be presented.
Overall, I don’t like biopics that are treated like long documentaries with slow paced and pointless clichés. I think it’s important to be bold when making a movie, especially when it’s about a true event.
There are not enough original stories coming out and getting recognition, so if there’s going to be another biopic at least don’t make it boring because at this rate, movie producers will soon run out of famous people for biopics.
