The problem with being hugely successful at a young age, especially in the show business industry is if you realize that you are extremely depressed, even though you are world-famous, rich, and have won several awards - the only place you can go is down. This has happened to far too many celebrities in the music industry, including Elvis, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. Most recently the downturn of the life of Brittany Spears has been almost daily celebrity news for years.
The new movie/biopic "Back to Black" is about the life and tragic death of Amy Winehouse, who died in July 2011 at only 27 years old. Her tragic and untimely death was after she had a huge hit album, received 6 Grammy Awards, and was world famous and wealthy. Despite great success, what Amy really wanted to be married and have children. From Amy's perspective, her world famous career had her believe that it was all causing her to miss out on what she wanted the most.
Like Whitney Houston, Amy's alcohol and drug abuse was caused by dating and then marrying the exact wrong man, who caused her nothing but frustration and misery. Amy's only way of coping with her personal life was to drink heavily, which eventually caused her to die of alcohol poisoning at the young age of 27 - after being sober for a long period of time after rehab. Losing her mother from lung cancer was another huge cause of pain in Amy's life and despite this, Amy continued to chain smoke non stop throughout this story.
This movie stars Marisa Abela as Amy, Lesley Manville as Amy's mother Cynthia and Eddie Marsan as Amy's father Mitch. Abela's acting and singing in this movie is very good, making the overal quality of story, more unfortunate, wasting what otherwise would have been a more recognized acting performance.
The reason for the low critical score of only 36% for this film is that the screenplay was not worthy of Amy Winehouse's life story. There were too many boring and unnecessary diversions and depressing scenes of Amy's life and struggles and not enough on her singing career and musical performances. There were holes in the story, especially with the details on why her husband went to jail. A better screenplay should give equal time to a young woman who skyrocketed to fame and fortune so early in life along with the downsides that far too often follow the very few in the world to seem to be so lucky and have it all.
My rating is not as low as the very low critical ratings of only 36, with a 70% and a marginal recommendation.
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