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Tina Turner, that dynamic diva of pop/soul/R&B from the '60s to the '90s, sings like a woman whose life story is every bit as rough and tough as her voice. And
What's Love Got to Do With It, based on her autobiographical account (in
I, Tina, written with Kurt Loder) of her years under the iron fist of her abusive husband and musical partner/Svengali Ike, is further proof of what we've always known about Tina: She's what you call a survivor. The movie is sort of the Disney version of Tina Turner's story--a glossy but thoroughly enjoyable, old-fashioned showbiz biopic with laughs, tears, great music, and outrageous (but faithful) period decor, costumes, makeup, and hairstyles. Our Heroine triumphs not only over the rigorous demands of her career in the music business, but finally manages to bust out of her troubled, violent marriage as well and become her own person. This is a movie that'll have you shouting at the top of your lungs: "You go, girl!"
--Jim Emerson
The film version of Tina Turner's life isn't bad, considering that her story inconveniently lacks the tragic ending that filmmakers usually require to give shape to the rambling, unstructured existence of a musician. Tina, at fifty-three, is still performing and recording, and in the absence of the snuffed-out-in-her-prime option, the screenwriter, Kate Lanier, and the director, Brian Gibson, have constructed the movie as a kind of feminist survival story: Tina (Angela Bassett) rises to fame as part of a husband-and-wife act, the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, but then breaks away from her brutal, domineering spouse (Laurence Fishburne) and climbs back to the top of the charts on her own. Much of the movie is grim and disturbing: Ike abuses Tina in just about every way a man can abuse a woman, and the domestic-violence scenes are intense, harrowingly graphic. The movie has a manic-depressive rhythm that keeps the audience absorbed: Gibson alternates scenes of Tina's misery with rousing, superbly staged musical numbers. Bassett scrupulously imitates Tina's spectacular dance moves, but there's no let-it-rip joy in her performances, and not much sex either. Fishburne's astonishing portrayal of Ike is what holds the movie together. The actor builds, in precise increments, a devastating portrait of a macho control freak; he even finds a kind of ghastly humor in the character's madness. Also with Jenifer Lewis and Vanessa Bell Calloway. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
