Bob Marley: One Love

Paint by numbers musical biopic that hits all the cliches; crooked management, a "complex" love story, father-son drama and some genuinely decent concert sequences.

The many flashbacks and heavy Jamaican patois don't do the narrative any favors (subtitles needed for this one!) Cast performances are mostly solid but unspectacular. Lashana Lynch's Rita Marley is a highlight. Kingsley Ben-Adir's Bob is likeable but lightweight - at the end we don't get any sense of what really drove Bob as a musician or a strongly religious man. None of the supporting characters are sketched out much at all, so the film depends on these two performances to carry it, with mixed results.

Overall a superficial examining of an important influential artist that could've been so much more.

I wish I knew superstar Bob Marley better after seeing the biopic, Bob Marley One Love, but I don't. For such a music legend, the greatest exponent of reggae and a tireless promoter of peace for Jamaica, director Reinaldo Marcus Green and his host of writers patch together impressive music and a few poignant scenes from 1976 to 78 into a whole that doesn't give the sense of his greatness before he died of cancer in 1981 at age 36.

As Marley, Kingsley Ben-Adir has the star power of the original Marley with a casual charisma that convinces us he could bring peace to the two warring factions in post-colonial Jamaica. Because Marley eventually leaves home to tour the world and land in London, we are limited in learning about the close connection to his homeland from his birth on.

A reason to see this unimpressive bio is to watch the inception of the album, Exodus, which Time Magazine called the best of the 20th century. As successful as that was, peace was not to be so, an impossible task even the great Marley couldn't pull off.

Lacking throughout is an intimate look into his psyche, such as we did get in the recent Oppenheimer. Both bios dwell on a few key years (a blessing rather than trying to depict the whole life), but One Love never goes deeply except in the successful scenes with his wife, Rita (Lashana Lynch), which have the kind of soul revealing power lacking in most other scenes which too often scan the surface.

The lesser dramatic revelations such as his passion for soccer, Africa, and the genesis of the simple Exodus album cover are well represented. Less so is insight into reggae while he lived in his homeland. The most we get serves just to verify that he was a charismatic cross between Mick Jagger and Freddie Mercury. The real Bob Marley is yet to be seen.

We went to see this movie on a whim and although I am not someone who listens to reggae music, I would like to learn more about it and see what Bob Marley was in our world. The story was not the easiest to follow because it it jumped around in time, which isn't usually difficult to follow, but it was in this movie. There were aspects missing that would have brought this movie together much better.

I found I enjoyed the music very much and I did get a sense of why Bob Marley was an important figurehead in the attempt of taking away hate at teaching love to all.

I thought the actress who played Bob's wife was fantastic. I felt a lot of pain and strife that she must have experienced as the celebrity status of her husband soared. To me, she was the best part of the movie.

This was an interesting movie with fine performances, but it felt a bit rushed and scattered in it's writing.

When watching the trailers I was scared they were gonna focus more on the music than on the man, and that's exactly what happens.

I feel like they remained só surface level on Bob Marley, the man, and focused more on what his music brought. And I think that's what happens when family is heavily involved in the movie, because they will want to play safe, and that's what this movie does, with the character of Bob Marley.

The screenplay also didn't feel like a final draft, some of the dialogue felt repetitive, and some of it, quite cringy. And for negatives that's what I have.

Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch absolutely kill it, they are fantastic and an early Oscar contender performances. Another thing I was scared was the accents, because at times they can go to over the top and make it feel like a parody, but they weren't they nailed it.

The music was also emaculate, if you're a fan of his music, you'll love what they did, and how they paid their respects.

I feel like for the right audience this definitely will be amazing. It's a cool movie, fun time. I just wish we could learn more about Bob Marley, not just his music.

It's fine, just nothing all that memorable.

I had a pleasant enough time viewing 'Bob Marley: One Love', though it does kinda seem a bit hollow post-watch - as in I don't feel like I've learned much nor actually seen that much, the movie has like three noteworthy events but then that's kinda it. The music from those involved also didn't feel amazingly utilised, I guess they didn't want it to be too jukebox-y.

Kingsley Ben-Adir does well in the lead role as Bob Marley himself. I'm not a Marley superfan or anything close, I basically only know his biggest hits, but the resemblance of Ben-Adir seemed off to me - a thought that was only solidified when the real Marley appears via archive footage at the end. Perhaps that's just me, though.

Lashana Lynch gives a good performance, spearheading the rest of the cast who are alright; interesting to see James Norton, Michael Gandolfini too... even if I didn't realise it was Gandolfini until the credits. Overall, it does feel like the film only scratches the surface of Marley's life. I wanted more from it, but to be fair it is still a decent flick in my opinion.