Marisa Abela does a great job singing and performing the essence of Amy Winehouse however this is the very slow-paced story of when she decided to sing and how she was going to do it before she passed. Director Sam Taylor-Johnson did a very overly shot and slowly paced film from a screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh that really doesn’t go into more details of her life and especially how and where she dies – on camera that is. Her ending is just a paragraph or two written on screen. Such a disappointment.
However, her music is well represented. I just had a heck of a time staying awake. Both Jack O'Connell who plays Blake Fielder-Civil her self-discovered drug addicted boyfriend she becomes obsessed with and Eddie Marsan who plays Mitch Winehouse, Amy’s father were very good in their roles – however when they were not on screen or when the music was not being played or performed, the film has very little content – especially more details about her life other than this new boyfriend and her father.
The film also looked good by cinematographer Polly Morgan and was edited by Martin Walsh and Laurence Johnson which did give it a real visual style and pace – it was just too long and too empty a feature film.
Like the Bob Marley docudrama earlier this year, this film fell short in presenting an interesting story in a cinematic form, Again, loved her music and the three leads, but it’s not worth a first view in the theatre to me.