Entertainment

Check Out the Excellent 'Get On Up' Trailer

by Jenny Jaffe

We may still be just scratching the surface of dumb fun summer movie season, but the trailer for Get On Up , the James Brown biopic slated for an August 1 release, may have just given us our first taste of the 2015 Oscar Season. The film, starring 42's break-out star Chadwick Boseman as the godfather of soul himself, boasts an all-star cast including Academy favorites Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis, as well as R&B legend Jill Scott and True Blood's Nelsan Ellis (that's right, if James Brown's manager looks familiar to you, it may be because you know him as Merlotte's own short-order cook/medium Lafayette Reynolds).

When you consider that they're being lead by The Help director Tate Taylor in a biopic of one of the most fascinating characters in American music history, and scored to a soundtrack of some of the most iconic songs of all time, it seems like it would be a pretty difficult situation to mess up.

Admittedly, it's a formula we've seen many times before, to varying degrees of success. A biopic about a great musician whose personal life was plagued with trauma, drug abuse, and difficult interpersonal relationships? For every Coal Miner's Daughter, there's a Beyond the Sea, and the disparity between the two is pretty devastating. When played well, though, the musical biopic is all but an Oscar shoe-in, and, it may be early, but Get On Up is going to be a film to watch, in every sense of the phrase.

Check out the trailer below:

Image: Imagine Entertainment