Review: Spinning Gold

Image courtesy of The Boardwalk Entertainment Group

 The problem with "Spinning Gold" isn't the material. Hell, this is the story of a record company (Casablanca Records) that, in the 1970s, fostered the careers of Donna Summer, Kiss, Bill Withers, Parliament, Gladys Knight & the Pips, and The Isley Brothers, and it's directed by Timothy Scott Bogart, the son of Neil Bogart, the company's founder.

There's a whole lot of interesting material to be mined here - George Clinton's insistence on the record company purchasing him a space ship, Summer being plucked from obscurity as a performer in Germany and her seemingly orgasmic experience recording "Love to Love You Baby," and the strange events leading Bogart to believe that Kiss' song "Beth" was a dig at the record company executive's marital strife.

Unfortunately, the film falls into the trap that some pictures telling stories about real people and events occasionally do. Rather than letting the story flow organically, "Spinning Gold" tries to cram everything in, making the story feel like - as a character in the "The History Boys" described history itself - one fucking thing after another. Nearly every scene in the film could be described as "... and then this happened."

One problem is that Bogart (Jeremy Jordan) himself might be an unreliable narrator - hell, he even says so. He has a penchant for exaggeration and it's possible that in making a film about his own father, the film's director doesn't have enough distance between his lead character to be subjective. Based on Jordan's portrayal and the film's screenplay, the biggest takeaway about Bogart was that he was full of energy and always scheming about ways to market his struggling company.

Also, because there's so much taking place here, scenes that should have more impact - Bogart being threatened by Motown for stealing its artists or Bogart leaving his wife and children for another woman - just fly by without much fanfare. There's a lot of great music here, but the portrayals of those creating and performing it feel more like a Wikipedia page than fully developed characters in a movie, although there is a solid scene here in which Bogart has a heart to heart with a young Gene Simmons (Casey Likes).

"Spinning Gold" has a lot of energy - for better, during the live Kiss performances or Jason Derulo's profane portrayal of Ron Isley; but also for worse during an odd scene that kicks off the picture when Bogart attempts to get Edwin Hawkins to sell him the rights to his hit song "Oh Happy Day" - but it's not always channeled in the right direction. 

This is the type of movie that might help you next time you attend a trivia night, but as a film the interest stemming from the material itself - but not always its execution - is what occasionally keeps it compelling. There's likely a great documentary to be made about Casablanca Records and how it took on the major record labels to score some gargantuan hits, but "Spinning Gold" feels more like a really crammed VH1 "Behind the Music" episode. It feels like a missed opportunity.