Cadillac Records: Critic Reviews

Cadillac Records lacks a center, yet it's an enjoyable ramble, with a feel for what made the early days of rock as wild as any that followed.

Cadillac Records is a rollicking and insightful celebration of Chicago blues in its hectic golden age.

Sadly the movie conforms to all the music-biopic stereotypes we've seen in Walk the Line, Ray and Dreamgirls.

While the story could use a tighter focus, the ensemble is strong and the music makes Cadillac Records worth catching.

It feels disappointingly bloated and too fast-paced by half.

Fifty years on, we're still living with the aftershocks of what Muddy and Wolf invented and the Chess brothers midwived, but it's in the air and not yet on the screen.

There doesn't seem to be a single fact contained within writer-director Darnell Martin's ham-fisted fiction, which renders pre-rock musical history as yet another downer soap opera.

You see all the major landmarks, but how enlightening can a road trip be if you never even get off the highway?

Cadillac Records may be a mess dramatically, but it's a wonderful mess, and not just because of the great music.

Martin could have made a much more compelling film by focusing on just a few characters instead of trying to deconstruct an entire record label.

Etta's story will be better told in another film, surely.

The ensemble is stupendous -- howlingly great -- and the music goes deep.

The film is a fascinating record of the evolution of a black musical style, and the tangled motives of the white men who had an instinct for it.

The electrifying music helps camouflage the screenplay's hyperbole.

As drama, Cadillac is adequate. As a jukebox musical, it soars.

The music is, of course, great. But the real strength of Cadillac Records is found in the stories behind it.

Approaching the blues with the enthusiasm of an overcaffeinated brass band, helmer Darnell Martin nonetheless makes some kind of music with the percolating '50s biopic Cadillac Records.

Most of the actors perform wonderful re-creations of the original song that give Cadillac Records entertainment value well beyond the hackneyed story lines.

Any student of rock history would have to be concerned that Hollywood might have only one chance to get this right. Cadillac Records doesn't manage that, but with this cast doing its own singing, and history this rich, it's close enough for rock 'n' roll.

Perhaps there were insurmountable legal restrictions. But the movie still serves as a dandy primer for rediscovering a lot of great music.

Anyone who likes pop music or wonders how bands like the Rolling Stones got rolling will enjoy the ride.

Martin, who also wrote the script, takes liberties with the Chess story, most notably dispensing altogether with Phil Chess. But "Cadillac Records" is such an exhilarating, spirited piece of work that its embellishments and omissions cease to matter.

One of the strengths of Cadillac Records, written and directed by Darnell Martin, is that it's a movie about music by someone who genuinely seems to enjoy listening to music.