The Five Heartbeats

This is such a wonderful, underrated film. Everyone I recommend it to looks at me like I'm crazy until they watch it and become total fans. One of the many delights about the Five Heartbeats is the soundtrack. The songs were written, performed and recorded with such attention to period detail they sound like they really come from the years of the movie. And most of them are great songs anyway. If they had been "real" they would be classics today. A Heart is a House for Love which was actually sung by the Dells, made it to #13 on the R&B charts. Most of the music came from Stanley Clarke, the brilliant bassist and composer. But Thom Bell, one of the originators of TSOP, contributed importantly too, including one of his old songs for the Delfonics. There are so many cool moments in this film. Michael Wright and Hawthorne James offer stand- out performances in a great cast. The Five Heartbeats is easily Robert Townsends best film.

After you've seen this, you might as well just avoid seeing any other movie regarding going form nothing to having it all in the music industry...some stories may be more dramatic, some more extreme...but this one pulls it all together lays it out like no other. I have seen this movie probably 20 times and will surely see it another 20. All of the ingredients are there. It's well made and yet, the roughness apparent in the script and acting at times seem to add to it's charm. Perfect imperfections, as Cee-Lo Green has named his new Album, is how I'd like to call it. When you watch the %H, you feel like you're back in the 60's and understand that the groups of that time simply had this fire inside that they had to get out of themselves....the problems came only after the fire was released: WHat does one do NOW?

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful movie...Hey Bobbie T. Lace us with another one of these!!!!

By now, every film buff knows the legendary story about the plucky, tenacious indie filmmaker who maxed out all his credit cards to realize his celluloid dreams. Spike Lee was one of the directors most associated with the tale, as he completed SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT. Another was Robert Townsend, who made the hysterically biting satire HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE, about the African-American experience in Tinseltown.

Once that film became a surprise success, Townsend finally found himself a respected talent, and chose his next project accordingly. He decided to chronicle the long, hard road to success traveled by a black singing group, through several decades of triumph and tragedy. Using the personal experiences of the legendary R & B group The Dells as a blueprint, (they also served as technical advisers), Townsend hammered out a screenplay with friend and colleague Keenan Ivory Wayans, and THE FIVE HEARTBEATS is the result.

Though the film contains moments so overwrought with melodrama that they threaten to slip into parody, the issues of racism, class distinctions, greed, payola, and the ever-present lure of sex, drugs and excess that accompany celebrity status are never treated casually or simply glossed over.

Whatever plot points the script may sometimes seem to stumble over, the talented cast, lead with steadfast confidence by actor/writer/director Townsend, never miss a note or a beat, especially when helped along by a great soundtrack, supervised by jazz/funk/R&B great Stanley Clarke. Every performance is remarkable, with special mention going to the underrated Michael Wright as Eddie, the group's talented and troubled lead singer, to Leon as the group ladies' man, (whose good looks and talent have landed him in several other similar high-profile roles), and to the overlooked Hawthorne James as the malevolent "Big Red," the epitome of a man who has completely sold himself, body and soul, to the dark side of success.

Townsend also manages not to forget that between the dramatic moments, what makes a great musical is great MUSIC; songs that remind us why even though the concept of people suddenly bursting into fully orchestrated tunes defies logic, the pure, giddy sense of fun and enjoyment we derive from such moments are why musicals are a genre that simply refuse to die.

Nowhere in HEARTBEATS is it more apparent, than when Townsend and actress/singer Tressa Thomas team up on a show-stopping number called "We Haven't Finished Yet," as Duck, Townsend's character, struggles to write a song, getting some unexpected and able-bodied help from his baby sister, who nearly brings down the house! It's moments like this that make musicals memorable, and in a niche that can never have too many well-rendered stories about groups from "back-in-the-day," THE FIVE HEARTBEATS is a genuine classic that can be recommended not just to black audiences, but to moviegoers of any background who love good stories about music and musicians.

This film is a masterpiece, it combines an excellent cast, with motown style music, a great story, and a great film all around, Robert Townsend is a genius! after watching this film you get an idea of what it was like for bands struggling to make it to the top, and what happens when they get there, I highly reccomend this film!!!

To the guy who questioned the racism in the movie.... you need to do a little homework, cause that was all truth. Although the movie was a fictionalized account, the racist elements shown were very much true.

The idea that it couldn't have taken place in the "60's", of all possible timeframes, is absurd and quite ludicrous. All of the major black acts from the 60's were subject to racism where they were treated poorly when off stage. ALL used the service entrance, or kitchen, to enter the venue in which they played. I'm talking Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, the temptations, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Jackie Wilson, Stevie Wonder.... you name 'em.

The practice of fronting songs recorded by blacks with white groups was commonplace in the 50's-60's. Unfortunately, many racist whites didn't want their music to have a black face on it.

Do your homework prior to debunking historical fact.

The movie is THE all time music themed rags-to-riches film ever made.