Honeydripper

Reading other reviews of this, I was quite looking forward to watching it. I was expecting interesting characters and lots of good music. After t started, I kept waiting for the music. There was talk and silly dramatic events. Then there was more talk and more silly dramatic events. This continued for quite a while. There were characters who really had very little to do with the story of the film. A couple of scenes take place in a church, for example, and they go on for several minutes each, but, in the end, they have nothing to do with the story. Then, finally, the climax of the film: the music came and after only a few minutes, the film was finished. I cannot recommend it.

The songs are to die for, and really make this a great movie to see. It's a peek into the cultural heritage of the blues and gospel in America, and the deep roots of rock and roll emerging from a segregated South. It's a bit stereotyped racially. The whites are all one dimensional, unsympathetic crooks and bigoted bastards except for one cloyingly condescending alcoholic woman. The black characters offer a more realistic and well acted mix and are multidimensional and intriguing. Glover is excellent, and you are really pulling for him by the end of the movie, along with his wife who stands by his side under tremendous stress. There is a real emphasis on the positive side of a family living out tough times which makes the story compelling. The interaction between Maceo and darn near everyone else, especially the sewing woman, was hilarious and entertaining. On the downside, it was very slow to develop. The pace during the first 2/3 of the movie was downright glacial. Some of the scenes could have been cut and a few more songs thrown in instead. It was a bit hard to believe that the guitarist at the end didn't check his amp before such a critical performance. Still, these are minor points that did little to detract from an overall good movie. Anyone with an interest in music and its roots should see this movie and will enjoy it thoroughly.

Picture 1950's Alabama at harvest time. Tyrone Purvis'(Danny Glover)former swinging little juke joint, The Honeydripper lounge, whistles a lonesome long-gone blues. Business is no business and he may be forced to shut 'er down. But wait, he may be able to save the Honeydripper with just one big ass rockin' Saturday night. He will hire the legendary Guitar Sam to be his champion. But any news is just more bad news...Guitar Sam can't make the gig for being in the hospital. So the story goes, Tyrone must quickly find another guitar-slinger to save face and his Honeydripper. A versatile cast featuring: Lisa Gay Hamilton, Charles S. Dutton, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Mable John, Gary Clark Jr., Keb' Mo' and Stacy Keach. Volatile soundtrack featuring electrifying rockin' blues from the likes of: The Aces of Spades, Gary Clark Jr., Mable John, Keb' Mo', and even Hank Williams.

In rural Alabama in 1950, Tyrone "Pinetop" Purvis is struggling to make ends meet at his club, The Honeydripper. With too many bills due, he pins all his hopes on promoting a show by the popular Guitar Sam. But when Sam doesn't turn up, Pinetop hatches a crazy scheme to run the concert anyway Another richly observed, well written and beautifully acted period drama by Sayles, sort of a companion piece to Matewan. Its strengths are many; an interesting story with great characters - we want Pinetop to come through despite his faults - excellent photography and terrific music from that great shifting period between blues and rock and roll. Best of all is the incredibly talented cast, all of whom bring a rich individuality to their roles; I especially like Dutton and Hamilton, but contemporary bluesman Keb' Mo' pretty much steals the show as Possum, the mysterious blind geetar-picker. It's one of a few movies which successfully mixes actors and musicians in the cast, each bringing out the best in the other, and Sayles' regular composer Mason Daring's music is a enchanting mix of old standards cleverly interwoven with new material. There are many terrific scenes - Delilah swaying in the revival tent as she struggles with her faith, Pinetop's story of the servant left alone with the master's piano, Sonny singing Midnight Special in his jail cell, all the cotton-fields scenes. Artfully shot by British cameraman Dick Pope in authentic Alabama locations, this is one of those well-crafted, truly American movies, which provides a rich historical escape into a colourful and fascinating landscape. The director appears in one of his usual minor roles as the clipboard-carrying no-nonsense liquor salesman.

I got "Honeydripper" based on the sleeve information, which made it seem like it might be interesting in the same way that the excellent Samuel L. Jackson vehicle "Black Snake Moan" was. The movie did keep my attention somewhat, but I was disappointed with its slow pace and meandering nature. Plus, the director could have done a better job of depicting basic elements of the plot. For instance, on the "big night" that is supposed to be making money for the club, there appears to be about 12 to 15 people in the nightclub. I don't think he could have made enough money to pay expenses on that. Anyway, I guess disappointment is my basic reaction. If you're interested in blues in the integrated Deep South, check out the aforementioned "Black Snake Moan." It is a superior movie.

So is this guy who gets off the train and carries a guitar in fact the famous man himself? Hardly. And Sonny is advised by the fantastic and friendly blind dobro player that he is on the wrong side of town. Let me put it this way: There's good rockin' tonight! Yes, I said rock. Five years before white people discovered rock and roll, these people were doing it and doing it quite well. There are outstanding performances from just about everyone. Danny Glover has some scenes that I wouldn't be surprised to see as Oscar clips. Charles Dutton does his usual fine work and makes us laugh. Stacy Keach also does great work. Mary Steenburgen has a good scene as the employer of one of the black women. Keb Mo' gives what may the best performance of all, and not just as an actor. He can play that dobro! The musicians are very talented, particularly Gary Clark. Even those young boys give good performances, however brief. You have to watch them again at the end, after their pretend musical instruments have improved. It's an outstanding effort you just have to see.

I recently saw this at the 2008 Palm Springs International Festival of Films. Director John Sayles was on hand and did a thirty minute seated interview on stage with an LA Times film critic following the screening and then did a 30 minute Q&A from the audience. Veteran Independent filmmaker and screen writer Sayles wrote, directed and edited this film as well as a cameo screen role. The imagination of Sayles and the cinematography of Dick Pope, set decoration of Alice Baker, art direction of Eloise Crance Stammerjohn and costume design of Hope Hanafin make this a beautiful looking film but while its heavy on looks its light on substance. Set in 1950, this is the story of Tyrone 'Pinetop' Purvis (Danny Glover), a big band touring piano player who now is the proprietor of a sleepy little roadhouse called The Honeydripper in Harmony, Alabama, a cotton center and home of a military base. Pinetop wants quality entertainment like Bertha Mae (Mabel John) but the roadhouse next door swings with the latest jukebox hits and draws all the young cotton pickers and black servicemen. Faced with unrelenting bills Pinetop gives in to modern times and hires a New Orleans recording star Guitar Slim to play the Honeydripper and get him out of the red. Charles Dutton is Maceo, Pinetop's faithful sidekick who wants to see the Honeydripper as a rocking' juke joint. Lisa Gay Hamilton is Delilah, Pinetop's wife, who works as a maid for the wealthy white Amanda Winship (Mary Steenburgen) and cooks the dinner menu at the Honeydripper. YaYa DaCosta is Delilah's beautiful 16 year old daughter China Doll whose delicate name reflects her delicate condition of being born with a heart defect. Stacy Keach is the white county sheriff who gets a cut from cotton farmers by sentencing vagrants to work the fields to pay off their jail sentences and by getting a little side money from black owned businesses such as the little roadhouses. Keach, who has beefed out a little and wears a thin mustache looks like Jackie Gleason in Smokey & the Bandit and is kind of a watered down bad guy role so it was hard for me to take him seriously as a threat to anybody in Harmony. Gary Clark Jr. is Sonny Burke, a rail hopping drifter who handcrafted his own electric guitar and knows all the current hip tunes on the radio and finds himself in Harmony, both on the wrong side of the law and with the potential to rescue Pinetop from his monetary woes. Of course we see this coming from the second he appears on screen. Keb' Mo' is Possum, a blind guitar player who apparently is visible to only Pinetop and Sonny and represents their musical conscience. The film is slow and predictable with far too many cast members most of which I haven't even mentioned here. Some great music here and a good looking period piece but it falls far short of being a memorable film. Everything, including the town, is just too tidy, neat and clean looking too. I would give this a 7.0 out of 10.

I was a bit confused before seeing this movie about what exactly I was going to see. The reviews I could find seemed unanimous in that it was a musical. But was it a highly fictionalised biopic of a black Rock and Roll pioneer, was it a whimsical look at the history of the blues, was it a downbeat story of how a hard-nosed juke-joint owner with a heart of gold saves his place from falling into the hands of the local mob? Could it even be a subversive story of a stage in the emergence of rebellious black culture from the institutionalised dominance of a racist state in a way which was to capture the imagination of young people all over the world and send seismic tremors through the "civilised" world? That too. The truth is this I ended up agreeing with everyone. It's all of these and more. More or less. I loved this film. It was great to see some of the great emblematic images of the blues woven together in such a natural way. I was delighted to see Danny Glover as the juke-joint owner, and Keb' Mo' as a blind blues street singer, "reunited" like this (I'm talking about Peter Meyer's docudrama "Can't You Hear The Wind Howl" on the life of Robert Johnson). And the newcomers (to me) were also great, Gary Clark Jr, who occasionally does resemble a very young Chuck Berry, and Yaya Da Costa are revelations, veterans like Stacy Keach as a corrupt-but-benign sheriff, Carles S Dutton as Danny Gover's friend and "go fer" , impeccably cast ... as was everyone else. The script is strong and well directed. Some have commented on the slow build but I can't say I noticed it. Nor did I think the film overlong. The story does moralise ever so slightly, but not in the normal "Hollywood Ending" sense. Only the young are permitted their idealism, everyone else has to deal with the cares of the world, which most often seems to be about choosing the lesser of two evils. The direction is never heavy-handed. The characters appear all the more real because they are taking time to think before they act. I hadn't realised until I saw this how much that was missing in so many movies these days with their impossible spontaneity, rapid fire dialogue and appetite for action or raw sensation. John Sayles' direction has more than once been accused of being loose but it is never languid. I hardly even noticed the use of flashback - a device I don't really appreciate. I especially liked the take on the emergence of R&R as the baby of the blues. When people, even fans, talk about it, there is always Elvis, and there is always lip-service to hillbilly, country, folk roots. Now I love Elvis - he's never off my CD player for long - but everybody should know by now that it was because of his love of the blues that he sang and performed the way he did. If Howlin' Wolf had been white (what a terrible thought) there would have been no need for Elvis (an equally terrible thought). In one sense, "Honeydripper" gently sets the record straight from a blues point of view. I sincerely hope as many people as possible get to see this film. The blues as a musical form is surprisingly healthy these days, but it has been badly misunderstood culturally in recent years. The consumers, if not the artists of rap/hip-hop culture tend to see previous black musical forms as tainted by an association with slavery and Uncle-Tom-ism. But the blues was not about being told what to do by a slave-owner. The opposite, if anything. At the particular time when "Honeydripper" takes place, 80plus years after the abolition of slavery, the blues was "about" how far you could escape from slavery and still not be free, among other things (like just having fun)! But I hope they watch it not just from the point of view of the music or the story but because it is a damn good film that takes us a step closer to understanding why so many of us behave as we do today.

This film is painfully slow and uninteresting. The dialog is brutal. The characters uninteresting. I have seen thousands of films, and this horrendous product should have ended the career of John Sayles. Sayles' Eight Men Out is among the most boring modern baseball films, but Honeydripper is at the very bottom of its genre.... and of all film making. There are countless good films about race relations in the southern United States, and this is not among them. Young directors and writers should watch this as how *not* to make a film. Danny Glover, Charles Dutton, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Stacey Keach, Sean Patrick Thomas, what *were* you thinking? There are always other movies to see instead of this one. See them all, then hesitate before renting Honeydripper.

I tuned into this one while trolling for a film and became immediately absorbed. The film interlocks several plots, as 'The Waltons' used to do -- the problem of keeping the night spot out of the hands of the criminal creditors, the issue of the unfulfilled wife (nicely mirrored by the alcoholic white woman for whom she is a servant), young love developing between the guitar player and lovely China Doll, a dispute between two cotton pickers (one a city slicker, the other a local field hand), the sheriff who, of course, is a racist but who loves un-spiced fried chicken, the inevitable tug of fundamentalist religion on the underclass of a rural town, and two waifs who end the film with a mime of the musicians they hope to be. I confess that I was stationed in southern Georgia a little after the time of this film and found my own experiences coming back vividly. It is a warm film, drawing on an ominous set of possibilities lurking behind the action, and it doesn't cheat with its interlocking happy endings. What a surprise!