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‘NORTH TO HOME’: A FAMILY REDISCOVERS LOVE AND JOY IN LETTING GO

Part of the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries line up, North to Home is less ‘mysteries’ and more ‘movies’ if it comes down to picking. A drama about family and rediscovering their bond, the film has oodles of familiar faces and a heartfelt story.

North to Home (2022) Hallmark TV Film Review

Returning home carries different meaning for sisters, Hannah and Beth (Erica Durance, Kimberley Sustad). Both living on the east coast, the girls plan to travel along with their families home to Alaska for their mother’s 60 th birthday. Trouble is, they’re in another fight because Hannah is too busy to come to her nieces school events and Beth toys with the idea of going back to work.

Back in Alaska, youngest sister Posy (Lyndsy Fonseca) is the only one still home, and her mother (Barbara Niven) is quite impressed with the way Posy runs the family café. However meeting the new to town travel writer, Luke (Tom Stevens) reminds Posy of adventure…

TV FILM REVIEW | ‘DON’T FORGET I LOVE YOU’ INSPIRES ONE BRAVE CHOICE

From things I’ve read, HMM is apparently going a different direction. This means they are stepping away from some of the “series” and perhaps creating more dramas as opposed to mystery movies. Not sure if the rumor is true or not but looking ahead at what is planned, this seems possible. I’m not sure what I think of this. If they mix it up with some of the mysteries, it will be a nice, rounded balance with something for everyone; romance on Hallmark Channel and a few dramas with mystery on HMM. However I think fans will miss the mysteries if they do away completely with them.

North to Home is from former Hallmark (in front of the camera) star Ali Liebert, who directs this one. Alongside the familiar faces in the cast, everyone is pretty good. Barbara Niven is familiar to many including those who watch Chesapeake Shores . Also fun in my book is seeing Lyndsy Fonseca return post Next Stop, Christmas . She’s good here as is the rest of the cast. The women look like they could be sisters, and the child actors are also really cute.

My mother and I watched and enjoyed this one together. It’s nothing revolutionary in that its themes are the same – family, love and forgiveness. However the typical progression of this type of film has made strides since the first ones I’d have seen. It now allows its characters new opportunities which I don’t think it once did and that makes things more emotionally satisfying. North to Home is certainly deeper emotionally than the usual rom-com, but it’s still cheerful enough to leave you smiling.

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Content: nothing to note though this one does hold a TV-PG rating, likely because of the more emotional weight of the story

Photos: Hallmark Channel / Crown Media Press

About Rissi JC

amateur graphic designer. confirmed bookaholic. bubbl’r enthusiast. critical thinker. miswesterner. social media coordinator. writer.

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North to Home

Where to Watch

Lyndsy Fonseca (Posy) Kimberley Sustad (Beth) Erica Durance (Hannah) Tom Stevens (Luke) Barbara Niven (Suzanne) Fred Keating (Stewart) Matt Hamilton (Jason) Matthew James Dowden (Adam) Mila Morgan (Molly) Mila Jones (Ruby)

Ali Liebert

Follows Suzanne McBride and her three adopted daughters, this looks like a great time for a family reunion, but the sisters are each wrestling with unique challenges that threaten to derail this special occasion.

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North to home.

2022 Directed by Ali Liebert

When life takes a turn, sisters take your hand.

Suzanne McBride is excited to spend her birthday with her family. It will be the first time that her three adopted daughters will be together in years. This seems like a great time for a family reunion, but the sisters are each wrestling with unique challenges that threaten to derail this special occasion.

Lyndsy Fonseca Kimberley Sustad Erica Durance Tom Stevens Barbara Niven Fred Keating Matt Hamilton Matthew James Dowden Mila Morgan Mila Jones Luvia Petersen Angela Nisheeta Mac Dodge Lauren Jackson Jay Hindle Jovanna Huguet Cliff Prang Saige McMillan Isla Sunar Maesa Nicholson Adrian Neblett Eli Antwi Chris Robson

Director Director

Ali Liebert

Producer Producer

Cynde Harmon

Writer Writer

S.W. Sessions

Casting Casting

Errin Lally Annalese Tilling

Editor Editor

Rob Lawrenson

Cinematography Cinematography

Anthony C. Metchie

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Alexandre Coscas Michael R. Goldstein Ben Silverman

Production Design Production Design

Ginna Scotto

Art Direction Art Direction

Daniel Lord

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Donna McBride

Composer Composer

Michael Richard Plowman

Sound Sound

Costume design costume design.

Kelsey Baran

Makeup Makeup

Kristin Loeck

Timeless Pictures

Alternative Titles

Three Sisters, Haza, Alaszkába, Les soeurs McBride

Romance Family Drama TV Movie

Releases by Date

09 jan 2022, 06 feb 2023, releases by country.

• TV G Hallmark Movies & Mysteries

84 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Richard Gray 🍿 ★★★

2022 Ranked  🐅

For some reason I'm going into 2022 the same way I left 2021: with Hallmark. This one was close to a Christmas film, so it filled a hole that's been missing since Boxing Day. All the tropes are there, with the fun addition of climbers who don't actually have any climbing gear.

Bingo points if you had: - stock footage - based on a book you've never heard of - big city problems - big city gal goes to small town - bad green screen - special occasion - a family secret - family v. career - overly understanding husband - misrepresentation of real life job - local festival/event/competition

Review by DYL

I really enjoyed this. Loved the sisters and everyones relationships with one another were all really interesting, even though Hannah was a little too hard on Beth for little to no reason. I liked Posy's relationship with Luke, I think it needed to be more developed though. The emotional moments all felt earned and honest. I think I sequel would be fun and definitely something I would watch. I need Lyndsy Fonseca in more Hallmark movies!!

Review by Sara ★★★★

I really enjoyed this Hallmark movie! Loved the focus on the sisterhood between the three leads, and that each had a separate plot line/conflict to overcome!

Review by Erin ★★★★

I really loved this movie-it didn’t feel Hallmark with having more of a drama feel but I loved it. Great cast (loved all the characters!), well written storylines that were tear jerking at times but always heartwarming. It was a well done movie and I’m glad my friend recommended it. (Thanks, Heather!)

Review by nicole ★★★½

I always enjoy the movies about sisters.

Part of #8moviesamonth

Review by Heather4CU ★★★★

Another really solid Hallmark movie to start 2022. This one definitely feels more like a drama series pilot than a typical Hallmark romance film. It really tugs at the heartstrings. The movie is well written, very well cast, and the production values are top notch even when using the green screen. The one new romance in the film wasn’t very well developed but it also didn’t take away my overall enjoyment.

Review by misterelguapo ★★½ 2

So a really well done Hallmark movie. Family drama, guilt, trauma, etc… all played pretty realistically.

I like these Hallmark movies that aren't the typical fare.

Review by Devon’s Movie Madness ★★★½

A Nice Movie About Healing From Trauma: 7/10

I don’t believe this movie is the greatest one of the Hallmark bunch, yet this is probably one of the most real movies that does offer the mix of psychological drama/trauma & melodrama that the channel has to offer (at least that I’ve seen).

This movie blends in partially interwoven tales of three siblings that combine to come together. That being a trip to the heart of Alaska to celebrate their adoptive mom’s milestone birthday mix together into a heartfelt drama that’s a quality family melodrama. The Young & The Restless ’ Lyndsy Fonseca plays Posy (a beautiful & unique name I’ve never heard of before) is dealing with her struggles of working at her parents’…

Review by Weena ★

Let it be known that I did not watch this voluntarily

Review by Abby ★½

Matt discovered how to stream live Hallmark Channel and now we live in a prison of our own making

Review by Rachel Wagner

How dare you let my kids decorate cookies unsupervised...huh?

Review by Chris ★★★

It was pretty decent.

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• Movie Reviews
• Short Stories

• North to Home

North to Home (Drama) [Based on Novel] (2022)

Director: Ali Liebert

Writer: Steven Sessions, Sarah Morgan (Based on Novel by)

Stars: Lyndsy Fonseca, Erica Durance, Kimberley Sustad, Barbara Niven

Has all the hallmarks of a TV drama. 3,0

Contact information

Mark de Graaf T : +31 0639889981 E : [email protected]

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North to Home (2022)

Genre: drama, duration: 84 minuten, alternative title: three sisters, country: united states, directed by: ali liebert, stars: lyndsy fonseca , kimberley sustad and erica durance, imdb score: 7,1  (1.100), releasedate: 9 january 2022.

This movie is not available on UK streaming services.

North to Home plot

"When life takes a turn, sisters take your hand." Suzanne McBride has three daughters. The two eldest live in the same town and argue because the eldest, Hannah, is so busy with her career that she doesn't have time for the younger and her two daughters. The youngest, Beth, is a happily married stay-at-home mom who is growing tired of that role and feeling unsatisfied. The younger sister, Posy, lives in Alaska with her parents. She longs for travel and adventure, but feels obliged to take over their parents' cafe when they retire soon. They are about to meet to celebrate their mother's 60th birthday, which is also the 25th anniversary of a mysterious bad event.

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North to Home (2022) Stream and Watch Online

Watch 'North to Home' Online

Need to watch ' North to Home ' on your TV, phone, or tablet? Hunting down a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or watch the Ali Liebert-directed movie via subscription can be a huge pain, so we here at Moviefone want to do right by you. Below, you'll find a number of top-tier streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription alternatives - along with the availability of 'North to Home' on each platform when they are available. Now, before we get into the fundamentals of how you can watch 'North to Home' right now, here are some specifics about the Timeless Pictures drama flick. Released January 9th, 2022, 'North to Home' stars Lyndsy Fonseca , Kimberley Sustad , Erica Durance , Tom Stevens The G movie has a runtime of about 1 hr 24 min, and received a user score of 71 (out of 100) on TMDb, which compiled reviews from 12 well-known users. Want to know what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "Suzanne McBride is excited to spend her birthday with her family It will be the first time that her three adopted daughters will be together in years This seems like a great time for a family reunion but the sisters are each wrestling with unique challenges that threaten to derail this special occasion" 'North to Home' is currently available to rent, purchase, or stream via subscription on fuboTV, Hallmark Movies Now Amazon Channel, Apple iTunes, Google Play Movies, Vudu, Amazon Video, and YouTube .

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I have no idea why Rob Reiner , or anyone else, wanted to make this story into a movie, and close examination of the film itself is no help. "North" is one of the most unpleasant, contrived, artificial, cloying experiences I've had at the movies. To call it manipulative would be inaccurate; it has an ambition to manipulate, but fails.

The film stars Elijah Wood , who is a wonderful young actor (and if you don't believe me, watch his version of " The Adventures of Huck Finn "). Here he is stuck in a story that no actor, however wonderful, however young, should be punished with. He plays a kid with inattentive parents, who decides to go into court, free himself of them, and go on a worldwide search for nicer parents.

This idea is deeply flawed. Children do not lightly separate from their parents - and certainly not on the evidence provided here, where the great parental sin is not paying attention to their kid at the dinner table. The parents ( Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander ) have provided little North with what looks like a million-dollar house in a Frank Capra neighborhood, all on dad's salary as a pants inspector. And, yes, I know that is supposed to be a fantasy, but the pants-inspecting jokes are only the first of several truly awful episodes in this film.

North goes into court, where the judge is Alan Arkin , proving without the slightest shadow of a doubt that he should never, ever appear again in public with any material even vaguely inspired by Groucho Marx. North's case hits the headlines, and since he is such an all-star overachiever, offers pour in from would-be parents all over the world, leading to an odyssey that takes him to Texas, Hawaii, Alaska, and elsewhere.

What is the point of the scenes with the auditioning parents? (The victimized actors range from Dan Aykroyd as a Texan to Kathy Bates as an Eskimo). They are all seen as broad, desperate comic caricatures. They are not funny. They are not touching. There is no truth in them. They don't even work as parodies. There is an idiocy here that seems almost intentional, as if the filmmakers plotted to leave anything of interest or entertainment value out of these episodes.

North is followed on his travels by a mysterious character who appears in many guises. He is the Easter bunny, a cowboy, a beach bum, and a Federal Express driver who works in several product plugs.

Funny, thinks North; this guy looks familiar. And so he is. All of the manifestations are played by Bruce Willis , who is not funny, or helpful, in any of them.

I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

I hold it as an item of faith that Rob Reiner is a gifted filmmaker; among his credits are "This Is Spinal Tap," " The Sure Thing ," " The Princess Bride ," "Stand By Me," " When Harry Met Sally... ," and " Misery ." I list those titles as an incantation against this one.

"North" is a bad film - one of the worst movies ever made. But it is not by a bad filmmaker, and must represent some sort of lapse from which Reiner will recover - possibly sooner than I will.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film Credits

North (1994)

Rated PG For A Few Words

Elijah Wood as North

Jason Alexander as North's Dad

Julia Louis-Dreyfus as North's Mom

Marc Shaiman as Piano Player

Directed by

Based on a novel by.

• Alan Zweibel

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North to Home (2022)

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North to Home streaming: where to watch online?

Currently you are able to watch "North to Home" streaming on fuboTV, Hallmark Movies Now Amazon Channel, Hallmark Movies Now Apple TV Channel. It is also possible to buy "North to Home" on Apple TV, Amazon Video, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Vudu as download or rent it on Vudu, Apple TV, Amazon Video, Google Play Movies, YouTube online.

Suzanne McBride is excited to spend her birthday with her family. It will be the first time that her three adopted daughters will be together in years. This seems like a great time for a family reunion, but the sisters are each wrestling with unique challenges that threaten to derail this special occasion.

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North to Home

Suzanne McBride is excited to spend her birthday with her family. It will be the first time that her three adopted daughters will be together in years. This seems like a great time for a family reunion, but the sisters are each wrestling with unique challenges that threaten to derail this special occasion.

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Movie Score

January 9, 2022,

Ali Liebert

Lyndsy Fonseca, Kimberley Sustad, Erica Durance, Tom Stevens, Barbara Niven, Fred Keating

Drama, Family, Romance, TV Movie

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Back to Black film review — no no no to this syrupy Amy Winehouse biopic

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Your heart may sink a little at the thought of Back to Black , the new biography of the late singer Amy Winehouse from director Sam Taylor-Johnson. It will sink more watching it. The story is intensely sad: a gifted, fragile woman dead at 27 after struggles with drink and drugs. Her music remains in a different creative galaxy to this dispiriting film, which is at once twee and ghoulish.

Winehouse is played by Marisa Abela, giving us a version of the singer as man-mad Camden sparrow. She captures her subject’s speaking voice well enough to make you wish she was delivering better dialogue. (“I don’t care about the fame game!”) 

Writer Matt Greenhalgh and director Taylor-Johnson ( Nowhere Boy, Fifty Shades of Grey ) make a fearful combination. Greenhalgh presents scenes from life like a cartoon strip. Taylor-Johnson adds a steady pour of syrup. The soft focus forever underscores that, yes, Winehouse was a chronic romantic. She also had demons, moxie, a raw London wit and razored intelligence, most of which are nowhere in sight.

The music mainly arrives in showcase performances, in the style of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis . Winehouse’s gifts as a songwriter don’t hold much interest. What we get instead is a pair of doomed love stories. One involves Winehouse’s husband Blake Fielder-Civil, a habitual heroin user played by Jack O’Connell, fresh from the gym.

The other is that between Winehouse and her father, Mitch. He was enraged by being portrayed as less than attentive to his daughter in Amy , the acclaimed 2015 documentary. Here, Eddie Marsan plays him as loving everydad. (The new film comes endorsed by the Winehouse estate.) The real villains in Back to Black are the fiendish paparazzi. For them, quite rightly, there is only the scorn we reserve for those who see opportunity in tragedy.

In UK cinemas from April 12 and US cinemas from May 17

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Sam Taylor-Johnson’s best film to date is more interested in romance and creativity than demons or blame

• ‘Her demons were probably worse’: does Back to Black reveal the real Amy Winehouse?

T he last time Sam Taylor-Johnson directed a movie about drugs it was A Million Little Pieces in 2019, based on James Frey’s notoriously inauthentic memoir of addiction – and the last time she made a film about a music legend it was Nowhere Boy in 2009, about John Lennon.

Now she brings the two together in what’s easily her best work so far: an urgent, warm, heartfelt dramatisation, scripted by Matt Greenhalgh, of the life of Amy Winehouse , the brilliant London soul singer who died of alcohol poisoning at 27 in 2011. It’s a movie with the simplicity, even the naivety, of a fan-tribute. But there’s a thoroughly engaging and sweet-natured performance from Marisa Abela as Amy – though arguably taking the rougher edges off. The only time Abela is less than persuasive is when she has to get into a fight on the north London streets of Camden.

And Jack O’Connell is a coolly charismatic and muscular presence as her no-good husband and addiction-enabler Blake Fielder-Civil. O’Connell can’t help being a smart, capable screen presence and makes Blake a lot more sympathetic and less rodenty than he appeared in real life – and yet part of the (reasonable) point of the film is that he was a human being, afraid that Amy would leave him for another celebrity, and that media images are misleading.

There’s a lovely, if faintly sucrose scene in which the already boozed-up Blake first meets Amy in The Good Mixer pub in Camden Town (already famous for its association with 90s cool Britannia and Blur) – buzzing with his horse-racing winnings and airily unfazed when the already entranced Amy challenges him to a game of pool while he cheekily lets her (and us) assume he doesn’t know who she is. But of course he does and even one-ups her in musical knowledge in compelling her to admit that she has never heard, or heard of the Shangri-Las’ Leader of the Pack, which he puts on the jukebox and extravagantly mimes to. There is a growing sadness in the realisation that this ecstatic first meeting is the first and last time they will ever be truly happy together.

Perhaps any movie about Winehouse is going to suffer in comparison with Asif Kapadia’s compelling archive-mosaic documentary Amy from 2015, which delivered the woman herself and also gave a clearer idea of her demanding musicianship and professionalism, far from the tabloid caricature of nonstop drugginesss. But this film tries to intuit the part that romance played in Amy Winehouse’s life and the narrative of unhappiness that it created in her work: a poisonous wellspring of inspiration.

And Taylor-Johnson’s film is also much more sympathetic to Winehouse’s father Mitch, the cab driver estranged from Amy’s mother who came back into her life to help manage her career and famously counselled against her going to rehab.

Mitch comes across better here because he’s played with bullish charm and schmaltz by Eddie Marsan – very funny in the scene where he infuriates Amy by coming to an important meeting and siding with the record business execs against her. I actually wonder if an equally good film called Mitch could be made simply about that lonely, complex figure.

Back to Black is essentially a gentle, forgiving film and there are other, tougher, bleaker ways to put Winehouse’s life on screen – but Abela conveys her tenderness, and perhaps most poignantly of all her youth, so tellingly at odds with that tough image and eerily mature voice.

Back to Black is out in UK cinemas on 12 April and in the US on 17 May

• Back to Black
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Ryan gosling’s first reaction to singing at the oscars: “no ken do”, ‘back to black’ review: a refreshingly honest look at the short, troubled life of amy winehouse.

By Damon Wise

Film Editor, Awards

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In a way, any music biopic is off to a bad start, since there’s always going to be the curse of symmetry: everything must square with what we already know, and fill in some blanks for those that don’t. Back to Black is no exception in that regard, but it’s understandable — how do you explain a teenage London girl who’s inspired by Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Charles Bukowski, Lauryn Hill and Charlie Parker unless she tells you? Refreshingly, however, it is free of the curse of timestamping (there’s no “Glastonbury: 2007”), which may be a hurdle outside the UK, where even non-music fans saw the whole tragedy writ not just large but played out in excruciating real time.

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What not be immediately apparent is that Back to Black is the story as seen through the singer’s own eyes, which is a very smart way of dodging the bullets that accompany any attempt to tell her rise-and-fall story. Although there is a LOT of foreshadowing in Matt Greenhalgh’s script (when her beloved Nan refuses a cigarette, you know exactly what’s coming), this isn’t a retread of Asif Kapadia’s almost forensic documentary Amy , which turned the tables on the accepted narrative of Winehouse as willing tabloid fodder. Instead, it actually indulges some of her self-sabotaging behavior, which may seem reckless but doesn’t seem to have tarnished any of the male members of the 27 club.

It’s a measure of Winehouse’s accelerated life that it only takes 20 minutes to take us from a family party to her debut album and the first blush of fame. Even then, she is headstrong, stonewalling her management’s insistence that she stop playing her guitar onstage (although she did later drop it altogether) and taking time out to live her life and find new material for songs from that lived experience (although one of her biggest hits was a cover of The Zutons’ song “Valerie” in 2007). Interestingly, all these contradictions start to add up, especially when Winehouse goes from saying, “Class-A drugs are for mugs,” to smoking crack cocaine, which is quite radical in itself for a biopic but also signals, in a very honest way, that we are never going to get to the bottom of this story.

The meat of the film, but not the focus, is Winehouse’s relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil, who gets off so very, very lightly. Played by Jack O’Connell, “Blakey” is the catalyst that sparks the singer’s very public descent into drink and drug-addled infamy (“You’ve got an eye for the bad boys,” says Nan, which is putting it mildly). But, again, Taylor-Johnson plays an interesting game with the truth here; it’s all very well to wonder where the adults were — and her naïve father Mitch pays off a lot of bad press in that regard, thanks to a very touching performance by Eddie Marsan — but these decisions were her own, and Taylor-Johnson makes that a tentpole, which — again — runs counter to the sexist “candle in the wind” narrative that grows up around so-called “difficult” female artists.

At the heart of it is relative newcomer Marisa Abela , who excels when she’s free of delivering expositional biopic dialogue and just being Amy Winehouse (a brief, verité-style sequence on the streets of Manhattan is quite breathtaking). In those moments, we get a sense of Amy Winehouse on the rise, a superhero origins story in which certain elements coalesce to produce the elegantly surly, coifed and tatted icon represented on the poster (although the film hedges its bets as to whether the famous beehive was inspired by The Shangri-Las’ Mary Weiss or The Ronettes’ Ronnie Spector).

Given the material, Back to Black bows out on an unexpectedly minor key, which is probably better than a queasy Queen of Hearts payoff. In that respect it’s an unusual film, in that it doesn’t quite boil down to any one thing: it’s not about fame, it’s not about money, it’s not (really) about addiction. It does, however, paint an unexpectedly complex portrait of an artist who, over the years, has largely been portrayed in broad and patronizing strokes, much like the tattoo of Betty Boop she wore on her back. The musical biopic format doesn’t quite do it justice, but it would make one hell of an opera.

Title: Back To Black Distributor:   Focus Features Release date: May 17, 2024 Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson Screenwriter:  Matt Greenhalgh Cast: Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, Lesley Manville Rating:  R Running time:  2 hr 2 min

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Back to Black review: Amy Winehouse biopic fails to hit the right note

It's out now in UK cinemas.

There's an irony in just how intensely scrutinised the new movie has been, down to paparazzi sneaking onto set , given that Amy herself was subjected to the worst of tabloid culture during her tragically short life.

At least now with Back to Black being released, the movie can be judged on its own merits as objectively as possible. Unfortunately, while some of the criticism isn't justified, the movie isn't good enough to totally negate the fears of fans that it's all rather pointless.

Despite the efforts of Marisa Abela in a challenging role, it's hard to know exactly who Back to Black ends up being for. If anything, it might be a better fit for people who don't know who Amy Winehouse is or what she went through.

Context is key when it comes to Back to Black . As has already happened with the first official clip, it'll be a movie that will be picked apart whenever scenes arrive online. And without knowing the approach to the movie, there are multiple scenes that could be unjustly criticised when taken in isolation.

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson and producer Alison Owen were keen to put the focus on Amy and her music. "This is a love story, it is also a love letter to her, and it is told in her voice, her words and her perspective. She sees only good because love is blind," Taylor-Johnson notes in her director's statement.

It leaves the movie feeling more like a romance than a biopic, right down to a moment where Amy runs back into Blake Fielder-Civil's arms. The question is then whether Amy's relationship with Blake should have been told this way, largely robbed of any nuance and focused solely on the fact that she did love Blake.

This extends to Amy's relationship in the movie with her father Mitch, similarly told from the same perspective that she loved her father. But in real life, any personal relationship – let alone Amy's with both of these men – is complex.

In a fictional romance movie, it would work as we have the ability to handle the cognitive dissonance of knowing it's not really like this. But Back to Black is telling the story of a real-life person and one who we know more about than possibly any other modern celebrity.

As an approach to telling Amy's story, it's admirable to not focus on tragedy, but it just doesn't work here. This is especially the case as the movie has to include some of that tragedy, from Amy's struggles with addiction to the toxic relationship with Blake.

It's a tonal mismatch though, so it ends up feeling sanitised. What we get instead are multiple tattoo scenes to mark the latest notable event in Amy's life, whether it's breaking up with Blake or the death of her grandmother Cynthia. It's a surface-level approach to a biopic, meaning Back to Black could have been better served just focusing on the music.

The storytelling and structural issues are no fault of the cast though, especially Marisa Abela as Amy. She was never going to match her vocals, but Abela's impressive singing throughout the movie is one aspect that feels genuinely real and soulful in a way that just dubbing her wouldn't.

Abela has also perfected Amy's mannerisms, which makes the musical sequences – such as her live-streamed Grammys performance – the standout moments of the movie. She might not be an exact likeness of Amy, but such is the strength of her turn that you forget.

There are other good performances among the supporting cast. Jack O'Connell is charismatic and charming as Blake, even if opinions on the movie's perspective of Blake might vary, while Lesley Manville anchors the emotional core of the movie as Cynthia.

As with Abela though, you're left wishing that the cast had more to get stuck into. They're restricted by the focus of the movie, especially Eddie Marsan as Mitch . By just playing him as a supportive father, he ends up with some of the most on-the-nose moments, such as a distasteful scene where he tells Amy: "You don't need to get any thinner."

For some people watching Back to Black , this won't even raise an eyebrow. But for those who know about Amy's life, whether from the tabloids or Asif Kapadia's terrific Amy , it's indicative of why this approach to telling Amy's story just doesn't quite sit right.

Amy's family weren't involved in the making of Back to Black although some of the cast, such as Eddie Marsan, did talk to their real-life counterparts. It means it's the movie that the creatives, including Sam Taylor-Johnson and writer Matt Greenhalgh, wanted to make.

Whether it ends up being a movie you want to see is another matter entirely. It's ultimately a subjective view on one of the most-scrutinised celebrities of the modern era that attempts to shift the focus onto her musical legacy, rather than her tragedy.

For some, that might work and it'll be seen as a celebration of Amy Winehouse. But for others, Back to Black won't do anywhere near enough to change their minds.

Back to Black is out now in UK cinemas and in US cinemas on May 17.

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Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor.  Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies , attending genre festivals around the world.   After moving to Digital Spy , initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.  

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'Back to Black' Review: They Tried to Make a Good Amy Winehouse Biopic (No, No, No)

B efore we talk about the Amy Winehouse biopic "Back to Black" it's important that we all understand the definition of the word "formulaic." (For those paying attention, no, this is not an encouraging way to begin a movie review.)

Lots of movies adhere to one storytelling formula or another, and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that. A formula is just a framework of familiar dramatic elements which many movies adhere to because those elements are usually satisfying. This is how we get genres and subgenres. Fans of romantic comedies, underdog sports movies and found footage horror flicks walk into their theater knowing what they're going to get. That's why they bought the ticket in the first place.

But the difference between a movie having a formula and a movie being what critics describe as "formulaic" is that some movies are nothing but a formula. They're doing what's familiar and nothing else. A formula is just a movie's skeleton. To make that movie feel alive you have to add muscle and flesh on top of it, in the form of personality or twists, because if you don't the film is just bare bones, and bare bones don't live except in creaky horror movies.

Which brings us back to "Back to Black," which is about as barebones as a musical biopic gets and that's saying something. This genre has been played out, unironically and with little innovation, for so many years that simply telling a singer's life story and wrapping it around how they wrote their most iconic songs doesn't pack any punch by itself.

"Back to Black" tells the story of Amy Winehouse but shows no passion in telling it and has nothing to say about the events that transpire. It's the utter minimum of what a biopic can be. It's not just mediocrity, it's mediocre mediocrity.

The film stars Marisa Abela ("Barbie") as Amy Winehouse, who at the start of the film is eighteen years old and speaks exclusively in exposition. In a few lines we learn she was kicked out of drama school, she's in love with mid-20th century music and aesthetics, and everyone thinks she's a great singer. Also, she loves her nan, Cynthia (Lesley Manville), who used to be a singer in the 1960s and wore her hair in a beehive, which will be very important later. Also, her dad is played by Eddie Marsan, who won't have nearly enough to do.

Amy's musical talent is such a foregone conclusion that "Back to Black" makes it seem like her first album was basically handed to her. An agent calls her up one morning and offers her a music career out of the blue, to which she rebelliously declares, "I ain't no Spice Girl." She records her debut album before the movie can make it out of the first of its many montages. The biggest roadblock in her early career, apparently, is her agent saying she should stop playing guitar on-stage and focus on crowd work.

Amy quickly meets the love of her life, Blake (Jack O'Connell), whose personality excites her, but who also likes abusing substances. Winehouse's own addictions are introduced as organically as a propaganda scare film, with cigarettes and alcohol leading to -- gasp! -- marijuana. But when she finds out Blake snorts cocaine, Tim Meadows from "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox story" steps into their bedroom and yells "You don't want no part of this, Amy Winehouse!" (Okay that doesn't happen, but we're all thinking about it.)

Amy and Blake are destined to be together only to break up and get back together again. Their relationship inspires Winehouse's most popular album, "Back to Black." We know this because right after the movie clearly and hamfistedly shows us exactly how their relationship inspired all the songs in "Back to Black," there's a scene where Winehouse does an interview and explains in no uncertain terms that, yes, her relationship with Blake inspired all the songs in the album. Thank god, because there's no other way the audience could have possibly known that.

It's standard operating procedure for musical biopics to dramatize the events in an artist's life that inspired their popular songs and then show them writing and performing said songs. But it's very difficult for those scenes not to play like a "Saturday Night Live" sketch because they're rarely subtle. In "Back to Black" there's a bit where Winehouse's agent tries to make her go to rehab, and while she doesn't specifically say, "No, no, no," she does refuse and that moment is genuinely tragic. But the movie isn't just foreshadowing her tragic death, it's also going out of its way to set up the creation of her most popular song, and that corny clumsiness completely undermines it.

Abela seems genuinely invested in Winehouse's plight and goes to great lengths to recreate her stage persona, sometimes to good effect. But she never quite captures Winehouse's energy. Actors in biopics don't have to be chameleons, and some of the best biopic performances feel like dramatic interpretations instead of close impersonations. Abela's performance has a youthful energy that persists no matter how hard Winehouse falls into addiction or emotional distress, which calls a little more attention to the performer than the character they play.

The most frustrating thing about Sam Taylor-Johnson's "Back to Black" -- besides the line "I'm not a feminist, I like boys too much" -- is that Winehouse's brilliant art and tragic fate have inspired millions of fans all over the world but they haven't inspired anybody to make a better motion picture. There's nothing cinematically bold, nothing inventive in the telling, and ultimately very little point other than that her life was sad.

This film has so much material to draw from. How is there so little to be said about the way her agent, her label, her father, and her husband either overlooked, enabled and/or exploited her substance abuse? The film spends more energy assuring us that Winehouse made her own choices, and that the people in her life who are still alive don't deserve to judged harshly, which can't help but seem a little convenient. No statements are made about the way the entertainment industry takes advantage of creatives, and too often fails to protect them from adopting dangerous coping mechanisms when they endure extreme lifestyle changes as a result of celebrity.

Instead, we get a generic sightseeing tour of Amy Winehouse's life, showing us basically what happened while offering no insight and little style. "Back to Black" cheated itself, and you know... that's no good.

"Back to Black" is in UK theaters on April 12 and U.S. theaters on May 17.

The post 'Back to Black' Review: They Tried to Make a Good Amy Winehouse Biopic (No, No, No) appeared first on TheWrap .