What Is It About Amy

Even though I have a tendency to get into arguments with everyone over everything, there are only a handful of things that I feel passionate about. Such things include:

1. Fitness

2. Sushi

3. Movies

4. Amy Winehouse

To expand on why Amy Winehouse is on that list, my appreciation for her goes all the way back to the early 2010s, shortly after her unfortunate passing. Before I got an iPhone and started developing my own musical taste, the artists I liked were drawn from the musicians that my dad and mom would play. Such was the case with Amy Winehouse, who my dad would play often during car rides and at home. I fell in love with the artist because of her unapologetic boldness in both music and life. You could feel the soul in her music as she sang ballads in a bluesy / jazzy style, and her incredible range in terms of both volume and pitch amplified the emotional impact of each lyric. Her songs talked about love in such a honest and vulnerable way that made them easily relatable to everyone. And you could tell that Amy didn’t care at all about what anyone thought of her based on her signature look and way she came across in interviews. So while it’s a cliché whenever someone says “There will never be another [insert artist X]”, I don’t see how there could ever be another Amy.

You Know I’m (Possibly) No Good

So, once it was announced that there’d be a new Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black coming out this year, I was both excited and nervous. I was excited because I’ve always wanted to see her life and career receive the cinematic treatment; I also felt that the very existence of such a film would solidify Winehouse’s status as a cultural icon. However, I was nervous because I feared that the film would be a watered-down depiction of her life designed for broad appeal. And I’d be lying if I said that the trailer assuaged my fears, what with the overall generic feel made only worse by the cheesy lines of dialogue that Amy (Marisa Adela) would spout.

Now if I were to try to guess how good of a film this new biopic will be by looking at historical data, the movie’s prospects appear mixed. We see a pretty wide spread in terms of the quality (based on Metacritic scores) of music biopics released in the U.S. since 2010, though the median score was “Generally favorable” and 63% of the films earned “Generally favorable” scores.

Now if we were to only look at biopics that have been released within the past 5 years, though the median score remains unchanged, there’s a slight drop in the percentage of films earning “Generally favorable” scores to 57%. So going off the data, I would say that that the odds that Back to Black turns out to be ok are slightly better than the odds of a coin flip.

Will You Still See Me Tomorrow?

Despite what the data and my own personal feelings may lead me to believe, at the end of the day every film is its own entity distinct from other “similar” films, whose merit can only be assessed upon viewing. So fingers crossed that Back to Black can deliver a compelling story that effectively encapsulates both the person and musician that was Amy Winehouse.

…

The movie is probably going to suck.