Ugh, another biopic about a musician. Get On Up depicts the life of James Brown, a musical genius who was also an asshole. Thanks to a bland screenplay and overly artsy directing by Tate Taylor, Get On Up is overly long, tedious and not particularly fun to watch.

Chadwick Boseman is serviceable as Brown, though his performance primarily consists of imitating the singer’s raspy voice and lip-syncing the various musical numbers in the movie. It doesn’t help that he is forced to swim under a layer of makeup, a problem that becomes worse for both him and the other actors around him as the movie progresses. Boseman was much better as Jackie Robinson in 42.

But the real problem is the filmmaking, which does its best to make Browns’ life not very fun to watch. Taylor (The Help) depicts some interesting aspects of Brown’s life, but the overall production treats him very one dimensionally. I found the Ray Charles biopic Ray to be woefully overrated, but at least that movie painted a fully realized picture of its subject. Get On Up establishes James Brown as a guy with two layers: as a guy who could sing really well, and as an asshole.

In other words, when the movie doesn’t have him singing, it spends its time making sure you don’t like him. Why would I want to watch a two-and-a-half hour movie about someone I don’t like or can’t respect?

Taylor tries to break things up by jumping around in time, showing us how James started off in extreme poverty, was abandoned by his parents and eventually wound up in prison—where he gets his start in music. Flashing back to Brown’s childhood is fine, but Taylor essentially acknowledges that the film’s narrative is weak and jumps all over the place to compensate—a move that simply doesn’t work.

Taylor also attempts to get artistic, especially toward the film’s climax, and the attempt is downright pathetic.

Get On Up isn’t without its merits—the music is good, for example—but the movie fails to get under its subject’s skin. The filmmakers’ efforts to compensate for this shortcoming don’t work, and the combination fails to give James Brown the movie this musical genius deserves.

Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.