‘Bob Marley: One Love’ Is, You Guessed It, Yet Another Frustratingly Formulaic Music Biopic

Is there a genre of film that is more frustrating than the music biopic?

These larger-than-life icons who lived incredible, inspirational, and even tragic lives when adapted for the big screen are so often the direct antithesis of their lives and work; pedestrian, rote and, to put it bluntly, boring. So often do they easily fall into the trap of becoming hollow hagiographies due to the involvement of the subject’s family or even the subject themselves that subsequently leads to the thronier, more controversial parts of their life being glossed over or omitted completely. Essentially functioning as nothing more than an elaborate and expensive cheat code for a performer to bag an Oscar nomination. It boggles the mind how this surprisingly popular genre is still as prevalent as ever after it was brutally taken to task over 15 years ago in 2007’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a scathing parody film that keeps getting better with age as music biopics follow the same tired and rigid formula Walk Hard was lambasting.

It was only a matter of time before Bob Marley, a pioneer of Reggae and a cultural icon whose legacy transcended music, would receive the full biopic treatment. Director Reinaldo Marcus Green proved he could tackle biopics with aplomb in his previous film, the Oscar-winning King Richard, and star Kingsley Ben-Adir with a feather already in his cap portraying revolutionary black cultural figures after his brilliant turn as Malcolm X in One Night in Miami…, Bob Marley: One Love had the right ingredients to be a biopic that could stand proudly, head and shoulders above the rest of the mediocre pack. Unfortunately, though, it’s the same old story.

The film opens in 1976 in post-colonial Jamaica where the country is in political turmoil before an upcoming election. At this time, Marley and his band, The Wailers, are well-established musicians and vocal advocates for peace and unity between the warring factions. But when an assassination attempt on Marley in his home almost kills him, his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch), and their manager Don Taylor (Anthony Welsh), he relocates to London to escape the violence in his homeland and gets to work on what would become his magnum opus, Exodus.

Choosing to draw its attention to a very specific 2-3 year window in Marley’s life as opposed to a full crib-to-crypt Wikipedia article of a film does offer a lot of promise. However, the film creatively shoots itself in the foot with this structure as context surrounding Marley’s life as well as Jamaican politics at the time is vital to engage with the narrative the way the film clearly wants you to. But One Love often just leaves you to figure it out, which normally would be a good thing, but when you are dealing with real-world events that aren’t as well known to most corners of the globe, it’s a massive oversight. In the rare instances of the film giving context, it’s delivered through either lengthy chunks of text that sloppily bookend the film or via haphazard, disjointed flashbacks to his youth. His first encounter with Rita, his introduction to the Rastafari faith, The Wailers’ first studio recording session, and recurring traumatic visions of Marley as a child being chased through a burning cornfield; these flashbacks not only completely scatter the film’s pacing, but are inserted seemingly at random as their links back to the main plot are tenuous at best.

On the upside, Kingsley Ben-Adir is very good as Marley in what is clearly a well-studied and very measured portrayal of Marley, and so too is Lashana Lynch as Rita Marley who owns the screen for every scene she’s in. Both performers beautifully convey the pathos, humility, and strength of both Bob and Rita and the film comes alive when it focuses on their relationship (which might explain the Valentine’s Day release date). But even performers as talented and lively as Ben-Adir and Lynch can only paper over the cracks of One Love for so long, as the biggest failure of the film is that you walk away from it knowing little more about Bob Marley than you did walking in. He’s become such a ubiquitous figure in the music world and popular culture more broadly over the 40 years since his passing, so the film’s hyper-focus on a specific chapter of his life could have shown us a side of Marley we’ve never seen before. But again, in tried and true music biopic fashion, why go beyond the bare minimum?

Bob Marley is an iconic figure worthy of a grand cinematic tribute that celebrates his life, music, activism, and altruistic philosophy. Sadly, Bob Marley: One Love is not a film that is equal to its incredible subject, all but doomed from the start trying to escape the clutches of the formulaic music biopic all to no avail. Granted, I have been listening to Marley’s music on semi-regular rotation since seeing the film, so perhaps maintaining his legacy by bringing people back to his music is enough for some audiences and maybe even the people behind this movie. In that regard, I guess Bob Marley: One Love works on some level, but just not the ones that matter when you have paid good money to be seated in the cinema.

Follow MovieBabble on Twitter @MovieBabble_ and Follow Sean @seanhub_

Thank you for reading! What are your thoughts on Bob Marley: One Love? Comment down below!

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to MovieBabble via email to stay up to date on our latest work.

Join MovieBabble on Patreon so that new content will always be possible.