If DREAMGIRLS is a feel good movie trumpeting the highs of the R & B music industry, CADILLAC RECORDS is the antithesis.  Director Darnell Martin’s new saga of the music (blues, R & B) business as seen through the rise and fall of artists signed on with the label of Chess Records focuses on the fights, drug addiction and immoral excesses instead.  The film even chooses to end with a prime character’s death.

The reason the film is called Cadillac and not Chess Records is the obsession a few of the film’s characters have over driving a Cadillac.  The film set in 1950’s Chicago, focuses primarily on white record producer and music promoter Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody), a well intentioned fallible man who ends up falling in a love with one of his protégés, Etta James (Beyonce Knowles). Among the artists showcased and promoted are Muddy Waters (Jeffery Wright), Chuck Berry (Mos Def), Little Walter (Columbus Short) and Howlin’ Wolf (Eamonn Walker).

CADILLAC RECORDS, to Martin’s credit contains a few excellent dramatic set pieces example being the interaction of Muddy Waters with Wolf and the confrontation between Chuck Berry (Mos Def) and the cops.  But the film is badly strung together with the feel of a goal clearly missing.  Martin would do better to leave out more of the melodrama and concentrate on fewer characters.  The musical numbers are the highlight of the film.  The acting is a mixed bag of tricks, the best performances delivered by Walker and the most embarrassing by Beyonce Knowles as the drug addicted abused Etta James.  Knowles should stick to singing off screen. 

Similarly, music fans would fare better to purchase the film’s soundtrack than to see the film.  Though watchable, Martin’s CADILLAC RECORDS eventually emerges as a forgettable piece of historic biopic wannabe.  I should know.  I saw the film twice, the second time not realizing that I had already seen it once last year.

CADILLAC RECORDS already opened in December last year in the U.S. and grossed a modest $8 million or so (at the time of this review’s writing) domestically.