A CORNPONE BIOPIC GRABS THE MIC WITH GUSTO
Oscars—as the 2018 Freddie Mercury saga did—they’re still a hard sell with the public these days. Maybe we’ve had it with stories of ordinary kids who spin their gifts into superstar gold, an unauthorized account of the life of Canadian superstar Céline Dion. So broadly sketched it’s more a puppet show than a movie, so swollen with sentimentality that it makes the most histrionic Dion ballad seem restrained, so weird in the way it digitally morphs the face and body of a 50-something actor into a sort of AI adolescent, isn’t going to win any prizes in the subtlety department. But it’s also compulsively, stupidly watchable.
