TMS Movie Review: Shirley
(Netflix)
Regina King has an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She’s been working in entertainment since the 1980s with roles in classics like John Singleton’s Boyz ‘n the Hood (1991), Cameron Crowe’s Jerry Maguire (1996), Taylor Hackford’s Ray (2004) and her Oscar winning performance in Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk (2018). Critics generally favor her and movie/TV fans have been aware of for her a long while too. We should be seeing King pop up on screen as often as Viola Davis and Angela Bassett. Instead of getting into the complicated history of race and Hollywood to explain why we don’t; I’ll just say that King does deserve as much exposure as the other two, and we can see why as she leads John Ridley’s biopic Shirley out this month.
In 1972 Washington DC, Shirley Chisholm (King) is the first black woman to become a US Congresswoman and now has even bigger plans to become the first black woman nominated and hopefully win US President. But it’s not an easy journey as Shirley struggles to win over voters in the conservative states who prefer opponent George Wallace (W. Earl Brown); her marriage is put to the test as her career eclipses her husband’s, Conrad (Michael Cherrie); and her own relatives, including sister Muriel (Reina King), feel threatened by her success.
(Netflix)
Lance Reddick, Terrence Howard, Lucas Hedges, Christina Jackson and Brian Stokes Mitchell make up Shirley’s campaign team, while André Holland plays delegate Walter Fauntroy. Historical dramas these days are much like the melodrama and romance genres, where the viewers can see the tropes and cliches a mile away. Even with the focus primarily on Chisholm’s candidacy, we still get the same beats and cues we would find in a generic life-to-death biopic on a famous subject. Ridley has his own Oscar, Best Adapted Screenplay for Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013), but outside of that his input has always seemed a bit hit or miss artistically. With Shirley, he plays it completely safe and to the movie’s detriment. The problems people had narratively with Bradley Cooper’s Maestro (2023) last season are just as apparent here. There are the usual talking points about mid-20th century US politics and the 2nd wave feminist movement, but nothing particularly revealing about Chisholm as a person or politician. King is great as expected and I’ve always enjoyed Hedges whenever he appears in films. But unless you really want a new lead performance by King, you would probably have better luck with a biography or documentary on the real Shirley Chisholm if you’re interested in her life.