A mess of a movie, somewhat salvaged by an extraordinary performance by Chadwick Boseman. A bunch of disconnected scenes add up, dramatically, to nothing. The scenes of James Brown’s youth, weakly reminiscent of the much better Ray, explain little, although one is rather surprised that as a youth he had no rhythm and couldn’t carry a tune. You want to root for the hero, but it’s hard when, as in Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopic, he has so many troubling personal characteristics. And then there is the Dan Aykroyd problem: trained on SNL he can create a character but he can’t act. In short, nothing in the film is terribly satisfying, including the flashback editing, designed to hide the dramatic deficiencies, except for Boseman’s electrifying impersonation of Mr. Dynamite, the hardest-working man in show business (also not evident). He was stellar in 42 and Oscar-nomination-worthy here, for his acting, his dancing, and even his hairstyles.

The fact that it struck me as unrealistic that Malcolm was able to revive a hydroelectric plant while the rest of the movie featured talking apes says how convincing was the overall illusion. The special effects were indeed special, but it was the humanity of Caesar and his cohort, as well as the performance of Jason Clarke and Keri Russell as the humans that carried the film. The story was predictable, but seeing it performed by apes gave it enough novelty; and the one philosophical thought – can one bad ape, like one bad human, ruin things for everybody? – gave it a modicum of depth. My major criticism: there seemed to be an infinite number of apes, no matter how many got shot and despite the finite resources of nature.

It must be a half-hour into the movie before we get what we came for – Sherry, Baby – and all the music before that, including a screechy Silhouettes, is pretty execrable. That’s only one of several confounding choices by director Clint Eastwood, making this movie much more than a singalong, although that’s where the main pleasure is found. Christopher Walken’s mob boss and the Bob Crewe character are great fun, and Tommy DeVito is a convincing problem. It’s also a great touch to have Bobby from the Sopranos running the barber shop in the opening scene, establishing the Jersey milieu. There are problems: the failed safe heist is absurd, and the early 1950s seem to run well into the 1960s. But all is forgiven as the boys run through the catalogue (ex-Marlena) and the Slumdog Millionaire-style finale kept us happily in our seats well into the credits. [smoking – lots]

A total misfire. Seth MacFarlane’s jokes missed their target as often as his character’s bullets. Many reminded me of the kind of things one heard in a 6th-grade lockerroom. All that raised this above a zero were the steely presence of Liam Neeson and the soap-bar beauty of Charlize Theron.