Respect

It’s one thing to play a legend; it’s another to be hand-picked by the legend herself to do the job. Before she passed in 2018, Aretha Franklin looked at Jennifer Hudson and effectively said, "You’re the one." That’s a heavy crown for any actor to wear, especially when the subject is a woman whose voice basically served as the tectonic plates of American soul, gospel, and civil rights. Respect (2021) arrives with all the prestige and polish you’d expect from a high-budget MGM biopic, and while it occasionally trips over the literal furniture of its own genre, it survives on the sheer, unadulterated power of its lead performance.

I watched this on a Tuesday night while eating a slightly overripe peach, which was incredibly messy but felt weirdly appropriate for a movie about the sticky, complicated nature of a life lived in the public eye.

The Weight of the Crown

The film traces Aretha’s journey from a childhood prodigy singing in the shadow of her formidable father, C.L. Franklin (played with a terrifying, charismatic gravity by Forest Whitaker), to her eventual coronation as the Queen of Soul. We see the early years of "the girl with the golden voice" who somehow couldn’t find a hit at Columbia Records. It’s almost funny, in a tragic way, to watch a young Aretha being forced to sing jazz standards that don't fit her spirit—it’s like watching someone try to fit a hurricane into a teacup.

Jennifer Hudson doesn't just do an impression. In the first hour, she captures the "little girl lost" quality of a woman who was a mother at twelve and a star by twenty, yet had no agency over her own life. When she finally finds her "demon"—the film’s shorthand for her struggle with trauma and alcoholism—Hudson plays it with a raw, shaky vulnerability that feels miles away from her American Idol belt. However, once the fur coats come out and the hits start rolling, she transforms. Hudson’s voice is a physical force that nearly blows the theater speakers out, and when she sits at the piano to work out the arrangement for "Respect," the movie finally finds its pulse.

Finding the Groove in Muscle Shoals

The highlight of the film, for me, isn't the big concert finales or the civil rights speeches. It’s a mid-movie sequence where Aretha travels to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to record with a group of white session musicians who look like they’ve never seen a soul record in their lives. This is where we see Marc Maron shine as Jerry Wexler. Maron basically plays himself—harried, cynical, but deeply appreciative of the craft—and the chemistry between his frantic energy and Aretha’s growing confidence is electric.

This sequence demystifies the "magic" of hit-making. We get to watch the song "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)" evolve from a simple riff into a masterpiece. It’s one of the few times the screenplay by Tracey Scott Wilson stops trying to check off a historical timeline and just lets us sit in a room with the creative process. I also have to shout out Marlon Wayans, who plays Aretha’s first husband and manager, Ted White. Marlon Wayans plays a villain so well you’ll want to reach through the screen and toss his hat into traffic. He captures that specific kind of mid-century toxic masculinity—smooth and supportive one minute, violent and insecure the next.

The Biopic Trap

Where Respect struggles is in its adherence to the "Greatest Hits" formula. Because it covers so much ground—from the 1950s to the 1970s—it often feels like a series of vignettes rather than a cohesive narrative. We see a young Aretha (played by the talented Skye Dakota Turner) interacting with a brief, glowing cameo by Audra McDonald as her mother, and then suddenly we’re whisked away to the next tragedy or the next triumph.

The film was released in 2021, right in the heart of a "biopic boom" where audiences were also being served the Genius: Aretha television series starring Cynthia Erivo. This created a bit of a weird cultural standoff. In the streaming era, where we’re used to ten-hour deep dives into a celebrity's psyche, a two-and-a-half-hour movie can feel both too long and too short. The movie treats Aretha’s "demons" like a polite houseguest that occasionally breaks a vase rather than the soul-shattering trauma it clearly was. It stays safely within the PG-13 lines, which is understandable for a legacy project, but I found myself wishing director Liesl Tommy had leaned more into the grit and less into the glamour.

Ultimately, you’re here for the music and the woman behind it. While the script follows the well-trodden path of "childhood trauma leads to fame leads to substance abuse leads to redemption," the performances elevate the material. The supporting cast, including Mary J. Blige as a delightfully prickly Dinah Washington, keeps the energy high even when the pacing sags in the final act.

If you’re a fan of Aretha Franklin—and honestly, who isn't?—this is a solid way to spend an evening. It won't reinvent the way you look at the musical biopic, but it will remind you why those songs have lived in our collective DNA for over half a century. It ends exactly where it should: with the recording of the Amazing Grace album, reminding me that Aretha was always most at home when she was closest to the pews. Hudson earns her flowers here, even if the movie around her is a bit too afraid to get its hands dirty.