The director of a biopic about a legendary historical figure always faces the problem of balancing the written about events from that figure's life with new information or a different focus, which allows us to see the subject in a new, intriguing light.
SA-born director Liesl Tommy's lushly realised, two-and-a-half-hour presentation of a pivotal period in the life of Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, doesn't necessarily offer much new in the way of information about the singer's life and is, overall, a little too respectful of its subject to make it stand out.
That said, it's an engaging and lovingly created tribute to a woman who was, in many ways, larger than life — from the ability of her voice to capture a myriad emotions and tones that influenced further generations of singers, to her keen awareness of a responsibility as a public figure to support important social and political causes.
The film is carried by the impressive pipes of Jennifer Hudson, whose renditions of the major highlights from Franklin's career manage to evoke similar spine-tingling emotional power to the originals.
The story offers a glimpse into Franklin's childhood and explores the difficult relationship with her formidable father, the celebrated preacher Rev Carl Franklin, played by Forest Whitaker, whose desire to control his daughter's singing career landed her in a wasteland of jazz standards and covers for a slew of unmemorable albums in her early 20s.
Along the way Franklin also had two children by the age of 15 - with a man whose name was not revealed until the release of her will following her death in 2018 - a fact which, in spite of its obvious effect on her early life, is skipped over here.
Meeting and marrying her first husband, Ted White, played by Marlon Wayans, at the age of 18, helped create a further rift between Franklin and her father. This wasn't helped by her refusal to leave her increasingly abusive husband.
What White did manage to do before Franklin finally divorced him in 1969, was to help steer her out of the misery of her Columbia contract and into the arms of Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler, played by Marc Maron, who put her together with the legendary session musicians at the Muscle Shoals Studio in Alabama.
Franklin's long relationship with Wexler would catapult her into global superstardom and change the landscape of R&B and soul music. But, as with many icons, there were still personal demons that threatened to derail her, leading her down the slippery slope of narcissism and booze abuse that she only really managed to conquer by returning to God and the church, where her singing career had begun when she was just a girl.
Her commitment to her faith was immortalised in her 1972 album Amazing Grace, a recording of a two-night live performance in a Baptist church in Los Angeles, which became one of the bestselling gospel albums of all time.
That's where the film leaves Franklin, and it's a logical high point to end on, even if the final reminder of her brilliance is the one offered in the credits by the footage of the instantly viral 2015 Kennedy Centre Honours performance of (You Make me Feel) Like a Natural Woman for that evening's honoree and the composer of that song, Carole King.
It's in this clip that Franklin, then 73 years old, demonstrates, as only she could, why she was the Queen of Soul and a performer who not even a determined and respectful performer like Hudson could ever hope to emulate.
Like Hudson's performance, Tommy's biopic does a respectable job and hits the expected biographical notes offering a solid guide through Franklin's life, but it doesn't quite manage to do enough to reach the cinematic heights that its subject has earned.
• 'Respect' is on circuit.
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