One Love’ Review — Kingsley Ben-Adir Keeps This Biopic Afloat

The Big Picture

• Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch deliver phenomenal performances as Bob and Rita Marley.
• The script focuses more on Marley as a performer rather than as a person, offering little new insight about his life.
• The movie is sanitized and plays it safe, lacking the authenticity that a biopic of Marley deserves.

Bob Marley: One Love has an opening scene that feels very reminiscent of the parody film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (a movie whose relevance remains stronger than ever), as Kingsley Ben-Adir‘s Bob Marley reflects on his childhood memories during an important press conference, much like John C. Reilly‘s Dewey Cox does before his big show. This is the first sign of the trouble to come. For those who haven’t seen any other musical biopic, Bob Marley: One Love might be the best movie you’ll see all year, but chances are the audience for this flick is very familiar with many of the biopics that came before. From Bohemian Rhapsody to Rocketman, these films have had some high highs and some low lows. Yet, regardless of their quality, they always seem to do well at the box office, and these kinds of films aren’t stopping anytime soon, as Amy Winehouse and Michael Jackson are due to get their own soon.

One Love had a lot of potential, and it’s clear that there was a mighty amount of passion in developing this biopic. In an intro before the start of the movie, Marley’s son Ziggy Marley claimed that he was on set nearly every day of filming. However, it doesn’t seem like the production team took notes from him about his father, as One Love doesn’t even know where it stands on Marley himself.

What Is ‘Bob Marley: One Love’ About?

To its credit, Bob Marley: One Love doesn’t follow the same kind of rise-to-fame biopic formula that most of these films try to pursue. Instead, it tracks the last few years of Marley’s life, beginning with an assassination attempt on the reggae icon and his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch), just a few days before his “Smile Jamaica” concert. For his safety, Marley moves to England, away from his family, and he begins to write new music, beginning with the iconic album Exodus.

There are also flashbacks scattered throughout the biopic, chronicling some of Marley’s earliest childhood memories, how he first met and fell in love with Rita, his conversion to Rastafarianism, and the formation of his band The Wailers. However, none of this gets too much screen time, especially enough to leave a true emotional impact. One Love seems far more interested in just using Marley’s name to cash in on one of the most generic and uninspired musicical biopics to ever grace the big screen.

‘Bob Marley: One Love’ Is Far More Interested In Bob Marley as a Performer Than As a Person

One Love isn’t unwatchable, and it is Ben-Adir and Lynch’s performances that keep the movie afloat. Ben-Adir rises above just doing some cheap and distracting fake Jamaican accent, truly pouring his heart into this role. While at times he does go a bit too over the top, he still nails Marley’s movements and mannerisms, and he’s got the vocals for the part as well. He might not look exactly like Marley, but he is almost always believable as the musician, even when the movie around him never meets its full potential.

However, it is Lynch’s electrifying performance as Rita Marley that leaves the strongest impression on the audience. While Ben-Adir’s portrayal of Marley is larger-than-life, Lynch’s work as Rita makes the movie more grounded. The few emotional beats in the film, including a climatic argument where Rita calls out her husband’s infidelity, work because of the rawness of her performance.

In the meantime, James Norton‘s performance as music producer Chris Blackwell is relegated to scenes where he stresses about how worried he is about Marley’s health and safety, expresses how he’s got his back, or tries to negotiate with him. Norton isn’t bad in the role and carries a lot of charisma, though the way it is written feels so one-dimensional and formulaic. Outside Ben-Adir, Lynch, and Norton, no other performer gets much to do in the movie outside of being glorified extras. This is perfectly fine since the audience is here to see Marley’s story being told. Unfortunately, that story is being told in a boring fashion.

The screenplay of One Love, co-written by The Wolf of Wall Street and Boardwalk Empire‘s Terence Winter, alongside Frank E. Flowers, director Reinaldo Marcus Green, and Academy Award nominee Zach Baylin, is the biggest head-scratcher. The movie commits perhaps the greatest sin of any biopic, as it’s far more interested in Marley as a performer versus who he was as a person. The movie does give hints at Marley’s personal life, including his religious and political beliefs, but never to the point where the audience will be learning anything new about him. One Love had an opportunity to tell Marley’s with some grit, but instead, we get a PG-13 take that would resemble a Hallmark Channel movie if it weren’t for the great lead performances and the marijuana use. Even those who aren’t experts on Marley will not learn much new about him, as the script never fully explores his personality and relies much more on his stage presence. Marley’s entire journey is written as if the screenwriters were given three basic facts about him: his Rastafarianism, his marijuana use, and his infidelity.

It’s a shame especially since Green and Baylin’s last movie together, the Oscar-winning Will Smith film King Richard, was everything you could want from a crowd-pleasing biopic that gets the audience to cheer from their seats. While conventional, there was something about King Richard that proved genuine and heartwarming, with a momentous amount of passion on display from all parties. That isn’t the case with One Love, which feels cynical, as if the studio just wanted to cash in on Marley’s name and brand, in the hope that fans of both him and his music will flock to the theater.

Bob Marley: One Love is just about everything wrong with the Hollywood musical biopic. It’s not the worst movie you’ll see this year, but it has every single cliché imaginable, is sanitized beyond belief, and doesn’t ground Marley in a way that makes him more relatable, flawed, or even human. Watching the movie is like seeing a concert from a seat in the back corner. You’re still there for the music, but you have the view furthest away from the artist himself.

Bob Marley: One Love is now playing in theaters in the U.S. Click below for showtimes.

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