Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsGreat story clumsily told
Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2018
I wanted to like Cadillac Records - but ... not so much...
Some good performances - 'specially Mos Def as Chuck Berry, really enjoyed that. Adrian Brody as Leonard Chess ... not so much, but tolerable.
Mostly it's a mess - odd tone - plays so crazily loose with actual history, starting with a middle-aged Alan Lomax showing up to record sharecropper McKinley Morganfield (aka Muddy Waters) in 1947 when Lomax was a youthful 32 ... well it bothered *me* ... then, ostensibly still ca. '47 a women shows up to Leonard Chess's blues club in a 1951 Cadillac. Lot's of that kind of sloppiness ... LOTS. Chuck Berry hears the beach boys "Surfin' USA" before he goes to jail for corrupting the morals of a minor across state lines or whatever - but that came out while he was in jail. Willie Dixon and
Muddy Waters go on their first tour of Europe in '67 but, at least Dixon went in '62 and '64 ... Just lots of stuff like that... and it bothered me ...
Still ... I had fun.
One personal note - at the end, Cedric the entertainer as Wllie Dixon as narrator tells how they sued Chess for back royalties and got paid, and how he's "still gettin' paid, 'cause I wrote all those songs" ... He was smart enough to regain his authorship rights and got publishing too. I noticed this in 1970 when a group called the Chicago Blues Allstars (unrelated to current group of that name) came to the Philly Folk festival. Dixon on bass, Otis Spann, Hubert Sumlin, really All Stars! I got to hang out a bit back stage and I noticed how much better dressed Willie Dixon was than the others - like *big* difference - noticed first with his shoes. He was dressed like a banker, a successful banker. Took me years to put it together with writer royalties.
