What’s Love Got to Do with It
Composite Score: 81.63
Starring: Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne, RaéVen Kelly, Jenifer Lewis, Phyllis Yvonne Stickney, Chi, Vanessa Bell Calloway, and Rob LaBelle
Director: Brian Gibson
Writers: Tina Turner, Kurt Loder, and Kate Lanier
Genres: Biography, Drama, Music
MPAA Rating: R for domestic violence, strong language, drug use, and some sexuality
Box Office: $39.10 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
What’s Love Got to Do with It is the Tina Turner biopic based on her own autobiography that she co-wrote with Kurt Loder. It is a fantastic display of Tina’s story and the triumph of a woman and her family over abuse and doubt. Tina’s music works phenomenally well with the film’s theming, playing at just the right moments to highlight the lyrics and their parallel or ironic juxtaposition to Tina’s personal home situation. Angela Bassett plays beautifully as Tina Turner, and Laurence Fishburne’s menacing portrayal of Ike Turner also brings a lot to this film. It is an at times difficult watch that manages to end on a positive note and rewards its audience for sticking with it and with Tina through the whole thing.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
What’s Love Got to Do with It portrays all the flaws of Tina and Ike Turner’s marriage – the physical, sexual, and verbal abuse, the infidelity, the addiction, and everything in between. This honesty makes the film incredibly moving but potentially difficult and triggering for some viewers to participate in. I want to give this warning because, while Tina’s victory over her abuser in the end is uplifting, the film’s middle points with Ike abusing Tina consistently could cause unnecessary stress for people who are going through such things right now or who are recovering and still living with the trauma from similar situations.
On a lighter note, the only other major flaw in the film is a potentially confusing timeline. The film is linear, but ages and years are rarely referenced, leaving it up to the audience to keep up through noticing the various wig and makeup changes that Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne go through over the course of the film. It doesn’t necessarily detract from the overall film, but for people who like having years on the screen every time a film has a time jump, it could become mildly confusing. On a related side note, Laurence Fishburne’s wig in the middle of the film looks like a Will Byers cosplay from a Spirit Halloween store; it’s hilarious and accurate to the time period but might take you out of the narrative for a moment when it first appears on screen.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne put on an acting clinic in What’s Love Got to Do with It, portraying the at times larger than life personalities of Ike and Tina Turner so well while also communicating the intimacies of the couple’s incredibly flawed personal life with tact and precision. After Angela Bassett was cast, she reportedly met with Tina Turner who upon looking her over commented that “she’s perfect” for the role, and it is indeed hard to imagine another person portraying Tina in this time as well as Bassett did. She was emotional, maternal, submissive, and then powerful, whole, and confident, running the whole spectrum of Tina’s early musical career and personal life. Watching such an incredible, Oscar-nominated performance is indeed a treat. In the same way, Laurence Fishburne plays Ike with incredible talent. He starts as a confident, smooth-talking rock star who all the ladies want – believably so, I should add – before shifting into the domineering, business focused, and incredibly abusive cocaine addict that Ike ended up becoming in the 1960s and 1970s. The heel turn is so dramatic but so believable, a true testament to Fishburne’s acting chops. His performance was at times so despicable that it is hard to imagine how Bassett could have ever worked near him again (she didn’t for thirteen years until Akeelah and the Bee in 2006). His performance also received a well-deserved Oscar nomination.
The Oscar-worthy performances are not the only draw for What’s Love Got to Do with It. The film’s story of Tina Turner triumphing over the abuses of Ike Turner and becoming a fully realized, confident, capable woman after all that she had been through should encourage all viewers and uplift the spirit. According to Tina Turner, the film only scratched the surface of all that she went through while with Ike, making such triumph all the more inspirational. Her story is an encouragement to all people suffering abuse at the hands (or words/emotions) of loved ones that leaving, while terrifying in the moment, will ultimately liberate and give the ability to operate independently and, hopefully, overcome the fear. Every moment of Tina’s separation and divorce from Ike and the success she experienced after that time that the film portrays carries with it the message that such a win is possible for others too. Even for people who have not suffered such abuse, the film provides a challenge in the character of Jackie, played by Vanessa Bell Calloway, a dancer/singer/groupie for Ike and Tina who is the first to leave the group after Ike’s abuse is turned on her. After leaving, she offers a safe place for Tina to come and vent but also to eventually find healing and recovery from the terror of living with Ike. This is the work for those audience members who don’t relate as much to Tina but are nonetheless outraged, to be that person for the people around you who are suffering abuse in silence, and often alone.
Powerful messaging about overcoming abuse and abusers to go along with stellar performances from Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne as Tina and Ike Turner make What’s Love Got to Do with It a difficult, but compelling watch. One of the best music biopics of the last thirty years, it provides insight not just into the life of Tina Turner but into the world of domestic abuse that, while difficult to watch, encourages its audience to fight and overcome. Absolutely, the film belongs among the list of Greatest Films of All Time and should be among most lists of must-watch films.