After some delays — I assume due to Covid — Jennifer Hudson’s Aretha Franklin biopic is coming out next month, and I am dying to see what it’s like. She has vocal chops for miles, but it’s an incredibly tall order to take on Aretha and not have it come across like mimicry, as she says in the profile. Which, by the way, is a nice story. I was the most struck by its descriptions of just how hard J.Hud worked, the famous names she consulted — Tom Jones! — and all the painstaking details she labored to get right. Not quite right, for me? The cover. I’d have used one of the other ones. Let’s talk.
