Eddie Marsan as Mitch Winehouse with his arm wrapped around Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse.
The Big Picture Music biopics are Hollywood’s current pot of gold. With films like Bohemian Rhapsody and Elvis making absurd amounts of money and Oscars, movie producers are going to drink this well dry until it shrivels up and dies of dehydration. And Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back to Black is the dry, shallow product of a subgenre that has lost its meaning.
The Amy Winehouse Movie Was Doomed From the Start Back to Black’s brazen disinterest in bringing any nuance to Amy Winehouse’s story is baffling. When the first images were released of Marisa Abela, Eddie Marsan, and Jack O’Connell filming the movie, it lit the internet alive with many fans begging for an answer to the same question “Who asked for this?” The answer is simple: no one except the people who stand to profit from it.
‘Back to Black’ Distorts the Truth Close The film’s greatest sin is that it completely absolves Mitch Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil of any wrongdoing in Amy’s life. Fielder-Civil has admitted to introducing the singer to hard drugs, including heroin, but the film shows her first taking them when they’re on a break from their relationship.
Marisa Abela Gives a Committed Performance as Amy Winehouse There is one redeeming quality of the film: Abela is out there trying her best. It’s definitely a committed performance, but it’s one weighed down by everything around it not doing its job well. It doesn’t necessarily feel like an imitation and Abela captures Winehouse’s irreverent charm and charisma. The movie's best scenes are undoubtedly the ones between her and Manville.
'Back to Black' Finishes With a Low Blow Back to Black's ending could not have been more mishandled. While the one touch of classiness of the film comes in the fact that it does not show her dying, it almost tries to make it out that Winehouse’s story has a happy ending.
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