It’s woefully ironic that the first clip from the upcoming Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black is of star Marisa Abela covering Winehouse’s “Stronger Than Me,” since that’s exactly what you have to be to watch the clip enough times to deduce what song Abela is mumble-scatting. As many times as I’ve heard “Stronger Than Me”—a single off Winehouse’s 2003 debut album, Frank—it took me several tries to determine just what in the sexy baby hell was going on in this video. Sure, the song is mangled and autotuned into a monster of its original form that sounds just half a note off from the original at all times. But it’s not just Abela’s abhorrent cover that besmirches Winehouse’s legacy; it’s also the content of the clip itself, which speeds through time and barely gives us a sense of Winehouse’s character.
Granted, this is just one clip from an entire film, which isn’t hitting cinemas in the U.K. until April 12 and won’t hop across the pond to theaters in the U.S. until May 17. But seeing the clip in the context of the rest of the movie isn’t necessary, at least not in this case. With two trailers and this one official vignette, snipped out of the movie and thrown up on TikTok and YouTube (where the comments were promptly turned off), Back to Black has failed to make any collective impression that isn’t steeped in vitriol.
There was no chance that audiences were ever going to take kindly to an Amy Winehouse biopic, given that the singer has only been met with even greater reverence since her untimely passing in 2011, at the age of 27. But for director Sam Taylor-Johnson to make a film that looks this shoddy is another thing entirely. With the reasonably substantial amount of evidence we’ve been provided, it’s safe to say that Back to Black is shaping up to be a colossal misfire, the likes of which we haven’t seen for quite some time. This won’t just be a bad biopic—it will be another attempt to stain the legacy and leech cash out of someone who fended off bloodsuckers for her entire career.
I hate when people say that something “looks like an SNL skit” (especially because they always seem to say “skit,” when “sketch” is the appropriate term), but the clip of Abela in Back to Black fails to even meet the reductive criteria necessary for that hackneyed joke. The scene begins with Abela as Winehouse, singing “Stronger Than Me” for what appears to be label execs before signing her first recording contract. Off the bat, it seems as though Abela is trying to sound like Winehouse and mimic her vocal affectations and mouth movements, but then switches things up the moment she starts to sound like the real thing.
Words are shortened or elongated at will, which could nod to Winehouse’s improvisational, jazz-style delivery, but these choices merely come off like imperfections. Characterizations of famous people don’t always need to be exact to be well-done—that’s part of why I found Ana de Armas to be so captivating in Blonde. But portrayals should, at least, try not to shit all over the earnest, beautiful art that an artist made. Winehouse was not exactly known for her polished, posh diction, but it was distinguishable! Abela’s singing muddles Winehouse’s words even further, turning them into sonic mush just for a chance at achieving a sound close to the one that came naturally to Winehouse.
The absolute worst, most embarrassing moment is 46 seconds into the clip, when Abela tries to reach Winehouse’s falsetto. The words, “You should be stronger than me,” sound something akin to, “You should byeee strrongguhhhthaunmeeee!” in an autotuned warble that I cannot accurately convey to you through the written word. That vocal effect continues in the lyrics just after, where Winehouse’s smoky, husky voice becomes all too polished in Abela’s bastardization. In just 90 seconds, Abela’s Winehouse has signed her contract, recorded her single, and is performing it live for the first time. Months of work, surely with countless fascinating moments to pick apart, are condensed into less than two minutes—undoubtedly to leave as much time as possible to milk the traumatic final years of Winehouse’s life on screen.
It’s that combination, the sprint through Winehouse’s early career days along with the atrocious cover of one of her songs, that leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth. I see so little care taken to preserve the greatness of Winehouse’s artistry and talent. Rather, Black to Black looks like it will prioritize the tragedy of her story over the truth about who Winehouse was. If this is a montage toward the beginning of the film, where audiences should understand the motivations, fears, apprehensions, and joy that Winehouse is experiencing during her big break—the catapult that would throw her too far—what will the rest of the movie be like?
We can only take a guess right now, but things don’t seem promising! The film’s official trailer suggests a whole movie’s worth of these frustrations, promising a tale of “the love story that inspired one of the greatest albums of all time.” Winehouse’s tumultuous relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil might’ve inspired some of her music, yes, but it also inspired millions of gossipy blog posts and tabloid covers. Focusing so specifically on the tragedy at hand can only spell disaster. It doesn’t help that Abela’s accent is, at times, so indistinguishable in the trailer that I almost got Diet Coke through the nose seeing it play in front of a movie the other week. Only in Back to Black does, “I’ve got to make something good out of something bad,” sound like, “I’ve…guhtuh make sanggoodousangbad.”
I am, however, happy to leave space to be wrong. As a critic, it’s my job to allow that leeway to exist, so that I can be malleable to the merits of anything I watch. I adore Marisa Abela in HBO’s most underrated drama, Industry (which I still say is better than Succession), and Sam Taylor-Johnson is not an unskilled director. There are even a few shots in Back to Black’s teaser trailer that I’m enamored by; a tracking shot of Abela running through the street, mascara stained and hounded by paparazzi, looks bleak in all of the ways that I’m interested in. If the film can manage to depict that side of celebrity and the public’s ravenous hunger to see stars meet their downfall, it could ensnare me yet. But I’m working with mere crumbs here. Somehow, I don’t see those scraps being made into a full meal.
There is only one Amy Winehouse. She was a figure so singular that she became a worldwide sensation; think of how many female singers from the U.K. achieved the same status, and you won’t rustle up too many names. Attaining crossover success takes gumption and the kind of talent that money cannot buy. Winehouse had it, and spent her life trying to wrestle with it. Attempting to duplicate the genius of someone who became so famous for their singular style is an almost sure path to failure. Back to Black’s mimicking of Winehouse’s off-the-cuff earnestness makes the film look uncool and downright clownish, two things that Amy Winehouse never was, despite the circus that her life eventually became.
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