GOOD GAWD! This is an unholy mess. But in that it presents James Brown as sort of an unholy mess himself, it sort of works. And in the parts that don't work there's at least a kind of ambitious experimentation that makes this biopic different from the 40 other ones that came out this year.

There's something to be said for a biopic that boils a life down to a single, easily digestible story. But there's also something to be said for a movie like GET ON UP, that basically tries to get at the complexity of a guy like James Brown by showing all the different James Browns he was--from The Hardest Working Man In Show Business to The Godfather Of Soul--and by mixing them up out of chronological order so they seem to blend together to form this one jumbled (but very funky) portrait of a brilliant, crazy man.

Major props as well to Chadwick Boseman, who is really incredible as James Brown. He was great as Jackie Robinson and here as a totally different type of character he is equally great. This guy is a genuine star. I'd bank on him being huge in five years.