In The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, three greatest pals lock arms for all times, hoisting one another up as they’re dealt one robust hand after one other. The ladies – performed by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Uzo Aduba and Sanaa Lathan of their later years – maintain their heads up by way of crushed goals, manipulative romances, home abuse, habit, violent hate crimes, the devastating loss of a kid and a most cancers prognosis. There’s a whole lot of trauma to unpack. However that’s not likely what The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat is out to do.
The film, tailored from Edward Kelsey Moore’s bestselling novel and directed by Tina Mabry, stays buoyant and lighthearted, with intention. Hollywood solely tends to inform Black tales once they can dwell on misfortune. This dramedy, as an alternative, chooses pleasure and laughter, even when, given the circumstances of its storytelling, such levity can come off as pressured. It’s an admirable try to fill a vacuum, however we will really feel the trouble, and the pursuit of a mission assertion, over any emotional reality.
At this level, you in all probability gathered that Ellis-Taylor, Aduba and Lathan will not be taking part in the R&B group well-known for belting out Cease! Within the Identify of Love. Their characters Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean, respectively, are simply dubbed “the Supremes” because of a passing resemblance to the singers led by Diana Ross.
The person who baptizes them as such is Large Earl, the nice and cozy and beneficiant proprietor behind Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, a diner the place the group gathers for drinks and dancing, and we truly don’t see any consuming. The so-called Supremes, who lay declare to the identical sales space at Earl’s from 1967 to 1999 as they work by way of their love, losses and regrets, by no means have something greater than a soda or an unopened bottle of ketchup in entrance of them. The title is a bit clickbaity, if you happen to ask me. I used to be anticipating a musical serving funk with fries and as an alternative bought a flighty time-hopping drama book-ended by loss of life.
We’re launched to the youthful Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean (performed of their youth by Kyanna Simone, Abigail Achiri and Tati Gabrielle, respectively) as they forge their friendship with an act of feminine solidarity. Barbara Jean misplaced her abusive mom. Odette, the feisty one identified to “whoop asses and nick souls”, senses that Barbara Jean is in an unsafe state of affairs. The latter’s alcoholic stepfather makes that fairly blatant. So Odette and Clarice instantly step up as her protectors. Odette goes as far as comically whipping off her Sunday greatest, threatening to field the stepfather in her undergarments ought to he resist. He doesn’t. And the women ultimately discover Barbara Jean a brand new dwelling with Large Earl.
The saintly restaurateur additionally takes in a younger white child named Ray (Ryan Paynter), who’s escaping his racist older brother’s violent family. Barbara Jean instantly takes to Ray, sensing a kindred spirit from throughout the racial divide. Their model of meet-cute is evaluating battle scars within the storage room at Earl’s. These are simply the earliest cases the place Mabry’s film, which she co-wrote with Gina Prince-Bythewood (credited below the pseudonym Cee Marcellus), awkwardly tries to wrestle some consolation and humour (to not point out romance) from extreme situations.
At midlife, we discover Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean attending to Large Earl’s passing. Their benefactor died whereas knelt at his bedside praying, as if he summoned the upper energy to take his life. His stiff corpse, with head nonetheless bowed and fingers nonetheless clasped collectively, is left in that place in a single day, as a result of his supremely foolish attention-seeking widow (Donna Biscoe), who turns his funeral right into a slapstick farce, didn’t wish to disturb her relaxation.
That is all passably likable stuff. However the comedy all through tends to be broad, the drama unconvincing and the film by no means settles into its competing tones with the terrific ensemble forged, led by Origin’s Ellis-Taylor, doing a whole lot of heavy lifting to make it watchable.
However there’s a restlessness right here. The narrative has a curious means of cherry-picking by way of these lives and dashing the heavier moments, leaving little or no room for the characters (and us) to essentially stew of their feelings. That shorthand is very jarring after we’re abruptly offered with what you’ll suppose are essential particulars. As an example, we solely discover out one of many foremost characters has raised a household when it’s briefly talked about in passing, and we ultimately meet the kid of one other … when he dies!
That is erratic storytelling, like a bunch of indifferent sketches and monologues, that leaves The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat making gestures in the direction of the film that it by no means actually turns into. Let’s simply hope we will see that film some day.
