The story of Muddy Waters was brought to the big screen this past fall in Cadillac Records. It's a great story, but not — unfortunately — a great movie, despite some spectacular performances. Jeffrey Wright, quiet but fierce, could not be better as Muddy Waters. When he goes electric, you feel it in your bones. Mos Def completely disappears into the role of Chuck Berry: he not only inhabits the character, he looks like the man. And every time Beyonce sings, everything stops, except the chills…
…but although the movie answers a lot of questions you may have had about the electric blues and early rock and roll (such as — why did Chuck Berry cross over, but not Muddy Waters?) as a story it gets lost. Visually it's held together mostly by the fact that seemingly all the characters smoke like fiends.
Fundamentally, it's not really clear whose movie this is. It's about Muddy Waters, mostly, but also about Leonard Chess, and Little Walter, as told by Willie Dixon. Not to mention a quasi-romance that develops between Chess (played by Adrien Brody) and Etta James (played by the aforementioned Beyonce).
Leonard Chess's son complained on NPR that this romance lacked reality, but in movie terms, the bigger problem is it lacks feeling. The writer/director gives us enormous close-ups of the two struggling not to kiss, bigger than you see on the small screen in soap operas, but their scenes go nowhere, and it's almost embarrassing to see these actors who can't figure out what to say making eyes at each other. (The contrast to a show such as Mad Men, with articulate characters shot with a Hawksian reserve, is striking — Mad Men would look fine on the big screen, even though it's intended for home viewing!)
But the strangest thing of all is what happens when Beyonce sings. Just as in Dreamgirls, when she takes the mic in hand, the rest of the movie falls away…to forgetability. My god, can this girl sing!
Just look…and listen:
Kit Stolz 
This is not surprising at all. Movies based on true stories NEVER work. Cadillac Records was slighly entertaining just like “Ray” was. However, neither were worth a trip to the movie theatre when both would be on my expensive cable television with in months of release. Cadillac Records had some very out of sync time lines. Even the passing music lover will realize it.
Not worth the paper the ticket was printed on.
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They are machines manufactured solely to perform their function. Automobiles are essentially built to serve a purpose, to facilitate transport from one point to another.
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