Film Reviews by Amy
A singer looking to keep her career going and her assistant looking to start her career as a producer get tangled up in each other’s ambitions in The High Note, a basically enjoyable movie that has a lot of good ideas.
Grace Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross, real-life daughter of Diana Ross, so she knows whereof she acts) is a music superstar; Maggie Sherwoode (Dakota Johnson) is her personal assistant. Grace has worked hard to reach her status in the industry; as she explains, it’s not the norm for a middle-aged female musician to still be selling out arenas and raking in money from album sales. But as her longtime manager Jack Robertson (Ice Cube) pushes her to do a Las Vegas residency (which would have her playing the same set of greatest hits night after night), Grace wants to stretch herself artistically, put out a new album, keep touring. Her record company is less than excited about this desire.
Maggie is harried but basically happy to spend her days buying Grace’s strange green smoothies and picking up her dry cleaning. After all, it puts her in proximity to recording studios and artists and the music that is her life. In her spare time, Maggie takes a stab at remixing one of Grace’s live songs, hoping to show her boss that she can do more than just run errands. When Grace finds out, she likes Maggie’s cut of the song but Grace is less keen on Maggie’s many unsolicited opinions. Jack gives her what feels like very good advice: instead of trying to start her career by mucking up his plans with his superstar artist, find her own musician to produce. Enter David Cliff (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), handsome dude singer with a great voice.
The High Note isn’t completely smooth, particularly in how the plot unfolds. I said it has a lot of good ideas, and it does, but it doesn’t seem to always know how to play out the ideas. The first two thirds of the movie is stronger than the last third, which contains a plot point that feels unnecessary. I wish the movie had found less conventional, more interesting ways to wrap up its various relationships.
For me, though, this bumpy ending didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the movie overall.
I like the way the movie seems to argue for taking big chances in your career and going for opportunities that seem beyond your reach but also sees value in experience and slogging it out in the trenches to earn a shot. Likewise, The High Note seems to take a very realistic view of Grace’s career — it’s not the “wrong” choice for her to do the residency or make the new album. The movie also has a nice mutual respect of and admiration for skills between these women. Grace is demanding and Maggie is overeager but there is no All About Eve-ing here, no The Devil Wears Prada-like judgment that somebody is doing life wrong.
Ross and Johnson probably get a lot of the credit for making these characters feel like believable women in their circumstances (they also get mostly good material to work with). I’ve always liked both of these actresses and their ability to balance comedy and deeper emotion.
And the movie has some solid supporting performances. There is the exact right amount of Ice Cube. Kelvin Harrison Jr. might be overshadowed by Johnson and Ross but he is very charming. Zoe Chao, who plays Maggie’s roommate, is delightful. She is a young surgeon primarily interested in getting sleep and, at a party Maggie brings her to, stuffing as much appetizer cheese as she can into her purse. She helps add moments of comedy that put this movie into, I guess, dramedy territory from a more straightforward drama. Or maybe the movie isn’t so much a drama as a romance but where the most interesting romances are between the characters and their careers and industry. B
Rated PG-13 for some strong language, and suggestive references, according to the MPA. Directed by Nisha Ganatra with a screenplay by Flora Greeson, The High Note is an hour and 53 minutes long and is distributed by Focus Features. Like a lot of recent Focus Features releases, The High Note is available for $19.99 for a 48-hour rental.