It's not a "documentary" about Chess Records; it's a work of fiction loosely based on the history of Chess Records. The hard thing for me to get over was looking at actors pretending to be people I knew quite well and who in some cases were my very close friends. Once past that, what did I like? The actor who played Howlin' Wolf did some excellent work. The actor who voiced Willie Dixon as the narrator came so close to hitting Willie's real voice that it was startling. Beyonce, playing Etta James, can really sing. But not as well as Etta James can. The plot, if any, is almost invisible, and the film is basically a collection of sketchy scenes (some true, some complete and occasionally ludicrous fiction) held together by music; when the music is good it's VERY good, although, go figure: NONE of it is "real." The actors who are pretending to be the musicians also do their own singing and playing (or else it was overdubbed and they were miming) but none of the music in the film is actually played or sung by the people the film is, you know, ABOUT. A funny moment for me: when (the actor who is playing) Wolf does his first studio recording session, (the actor who is playing) Leonard Chess calls out from the control room to his guitarist "hey you, what's your name?" and the young man stands up and says "Hubert Sumlin, sir." Sitting next to him on a chair, noodling quietly on another guitar, is the *real* Hubert Sumlin! I laughed out loud at that. Goofs? Sure, plenty. One of the film's main premises is that Leonard Chess (his brother Phil does not exist for the purposes of the film) gives the musicians Cadillacs in lieu of royalties. My friend Jim, who saw the film with me, knows cars, I don't; he kept pointing out that the year of the hit record and the year of the Cadillac that was the "reward" were all wrong. In 1954 someone was given a 1956 Cadillac; come on, how hard could it have been to get THAT right? Oh yeah, and several times the musicians, in the recording studio, while doing a TAKE, were shown walking around the studio handholding their vocal mikes. In what universe could that possibly have happened? Alan Lomax, who first recorded Muddy Waters in Mississippi, was in his early twenties at the time, but is played as a paunchy, balding, clearly middle-aged man. Oh, and all the Etta James tracks that are shown being recorded at the Chess studios in Chicago? Were all actuallly recorded in Muscle Shoals! But nitpicking aside, I'm glad I saw it, it was okay, nothing great, nothing awful. Some good lines. And Jim bought me popcorn!
Now I hear that there is ANOTHER movie about Chess Records coming out soon, to be called "Who Do You Love." Who woulda thought?