The film follows the first two decades of Franklin's life, from being born as a musical prodigy in an affluent African-American family, the repercussions of losing her mother at age 10 to her arduous rise to international musical stardom, while enduring an abusive marriage, ultimately concluding with the recording of her influential live album Amazing Grace (1972).... (Full plot summary below)
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The film follows the first two decades of Franklin's life, from being born as a musical prodigy in an affluent African-American family, the repercussions of losing her mother at age 10 to her arduous rise to international musical stardom, while enduring an abusive marriage, ultimately concluding with the recording of her influential live album Amazing Grace (1972).
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| San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleRespect has everything you could hope for in a musical biopic. It has a good story and great songs and, best of all, it has someone in the lead role who can put those songs over. |
| Film ThreatAlan NgLiesl Tommy extracts the proper emotion from every scene, and the music is like truffles on top of a fantastic meal. |
| Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperRespect is filled with memorable supporting turns, including Audra McDonald as Aretha’s mother and Saycon Sengbloh and Hailey Kilgore as her sisters, who were often in the background in more ways than one — but an old-fashioned show-business biopic such as this rises and falls on the talents of the lead, and it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world doing more justice to the legacy of Aretha Franklin than Jennifer Hudson. |
| Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsRespect runs into trouble when its own respect toward Aretha Franklin, the woman who gave us the voice of a century, settles for garden-variety adoration. But longtime stage director Liesl Tommy’s debut feature, working from a screenplay by dramatist and screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson, offers plenty of compensations amid its biopic conventions. |
| The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyA powerful account of self-actualization spanning 20 formative years, Liesl Tommy’s biopic is also an intimate gift of love, rich in complexity, spirituality, Black pride and feminist grit rooted not in didactic speeches but in authentic experience. The ageless music, of course, is the galvanizing force, but it’s the personal struggle behind it that makes the story so affecting. |
| Movie NationRoger MooreStately as it is, Respect never quite becomes a “great film,” but Hudson, Whitaker, McDonald, Burgess and Maron ensure it’s never less than an entertaining one, a musical biography that gives the Queen of Soul her royal due. |
| TimeStephanie ZacharekRespect honors the utilitarian nature of songwriting, and of making art in general. But the movie honors subtler elements of Franklin’s nature, too—as much as we can know of it—most notably her guardedness, born of necessity. |
| ReelViewsJames BerardinelliWhile it’s easy to quibble about the choices of omission and inclusion made by screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson and whether a more adventurous, unconventional approach might have been a better fit for the central character’s personality, Hudson renders such criticism moot. Her performance as Aretha Franklin is more than worth the price of admission. |
| Washington PostAnn HornadayRespect is nominally a movie about a woman finding her voice, but more accurately it’s about her taking full possession of it. |
| ConsequenceCarys AndersonAll of the events of Respect are to be expected. No new truths about the Queen of Soul are unearthed. But the film itself is well-crafted, and each performance brings storied characters to life. |
