A CORNPONE BIOPIC GRABS THE MIC WITH GUSTO
VEN WHEN MUSIC BIOPICS WIN Oscars—as the 2018 Freddie Mercury saga did—they’re still a hard sell with the public these days. Maybe we’ve had it with stories of ordinary kids who spin an unauthorized account of the life of Canadian superstar Céline Dion. So broadly sketched it’s more a puppet show than a movie, so swollen with sentimentality that it makes the most histrionic Dion ballad seem restrained, so weird in the way it digitally morphs the face and body of a 50-something actor into a sort of AI adolescent, isn’t going to win any prizes in the subtlety department. But it’s also compulsively, stupidly watchable.
