Beats focuses on August Monroe, played by Khalil Everage, a young boy who, along with his sister Kari, is shot one day while out on the streets. Kari dies and August stays holed up in his room with PTSD and anxiety attacks, while attempting to write music, as his mother Carla, played by Uzo Aduba, does what she can to protect him. August stops going to school, and the security guard Romelo, played by Anthony Anderson, stops by to convince him to come back. Hearing August’s music, he sees the teenager as his ticket back into the hip-hop scene, as well as a means to get back with his ex-wife Vanessa, played by Emayatzy Corinealdi, and soon begins to help August write music in hopes of him realizing his true potential.
The story feels like countless others. A kid with talent gets mentored by a broken individual, the two hit it off, form a strong friendship, then there’s a rift between them. Meanwhile, there’s an overprotective parent in the mix who repeatedly shifts between being caring an understanding to clashing with the main characters. It’s difficult to really discuss Beats because there’s not too many things about it that are unique. It’s not that it’s necessarily bad, but it essentially rehashes so many old, worn out plot lines without really doing too much to stand out on its own.
It feels like writer Miles Orion Feldsott had a checklist of every trope that goes into making a movie with this sort of material and made sure he hit every single one of those points, even if they all didn’t seem necessary. There’s an obligatory romantic subplot in which August attempts to date a classmate of his who he’s been dreaming about since the beginning of the movie. There’s a fair amount of time dedicated to this, but this ultimately adds next to nothing to the overall story. It feels so disconnected from everything else that’s going on, and has little effect on the main story between August and Romelo, and feels more like it was added simply to pad the run time.
And this film does drag at times. In addition to the aforementioned unnecessary subplot, the film is just filled with scenes of filler and B-roll. There are scenes of Romelo and August just hanging out, and are meant to feel like they’re these big meditative, character-building moments, except there are way too many of these moments that just prolong the rest of the film’s events. There are times the film feels like it was edited together to feel more like a music video, which makes sense as director Chris Robinson has an extensive career in directing music videos, and the editing here definitely reflects that overall feel.
Despite many sequences that feel like ultimately go nowhere, one positive about those moments is that they are shot quite well. Robinson’s direction in general is one of the film’s stronger aspects, as he clearly does have a keen eye behind the camera. There are plenty of great wide shots that really help bring out the overall gritty feel of the streets of Chicago, which does help set the tone for certain key scenes, especially towards the middle of the movie as Romelo coaxes August out of his room. This film’s visual appeal does give it one of the few semblances of its own identity that help make up for a generic script.
The film’s strongest element though is its acting. Both Anthony Anderson and Uzo Aduba in particular are the two standouts here. Both contain a passionate, emotional delivery that really elevates much of the generic material. The way in which they speak and react to things makes them feel like real people, and allows for the audience to care for them, despite feeling like a copy-and-paste of similarly written characters in other films. Aduba’s performance in particular is refreshing to watch, as she finally gets to show a bit more of her range after her seven year stint on Netflix’s Orange is the New Black.
Beats is essentially a rehash of so many other movies that there really isn’t anything to it in terms of story that it can really call its own. It makes it a point to hit so many plot points of other films that it adds plenty of sequences that just bloat the run time and don’t contribute anything to the main story. Though the film isn’t a total drag, as it has pretty solid direction, as well as some standout performances from its cast that take the film’s underwritten characters and turn them into people the audience can care about.
Recommendation: Proceed With Caution
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