I Saw The Light, film review: It's not just the musical numbers that disappoint

There's something wrong about honky-tonk Tom, says Charlotte O'Sullivan

Tom Hiddleston is the opposite of Marmite. By rights, he should be an acquired taste (he resembles a debonair skeleton). Yet we all agree that he’s delicious.

He’s been praised to the skies for his turn in this Hank Williams biopic, which sees him warble a bunch of songs made famous by the troubled, honky-tonk icon. We already knew Hiddleston could dance. So he can sing, too? Er, like I say, the man can dance. His baritone isn’t terrible. It’s just tragically straightforward. If you’ve ever been goosed by one of Williams’s high-wire yodels, you’ll feel what’s missing in your gut.

Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon raised the bar for vocal performances when they starred in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. And the success enjoyed by them probably encouraged director Marc Abraham to put Hiddleston in front of a real mic. That, and a pinch of cultural snobbery.

We wouldn’t expect an actor to hit the top notes in a biopic about an opera legend. That’s because we think of excellence in the high arts as being extremely rare and would scoff at the idea of it being simulated overnight. Abraham assumed that five weeks at singing boot camp would allow Hiddleston to pass as a country music great. Miracles do happen but, when they don’t, film-makers should have a plan B.

In the film, Williams says he wants to keep things simple; a member of his backing band mutters that all his songs are simple and the jibe makes Williams wince. How ironic that Abraham (albeit inadvertently) shows a similar lack of respect.

It’s not just the musical numbers that disappoint. Hiddleston is superb at making us believe in Williams’s anguish, arrogance and charm. Yet it’s a bit hard to buy the 35-year-old actor as a young upstart (when we first meet Williams, he’s meant to be 21).

The camera-work, too, is fidgety rather than dynamic. And it seems unwise to focus on Williams’s relationships with women. Various formidable females — including Williams’s ambitious first wife, Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen) — fight over the dipsomaniac as he tries, and fails, to make them happy. None of these characters seem central to his life, which means, naturally, that the film lacks a centre. Bleak biopics don’t have to be grim (think of Raging Bull). But this one is neither illuminating nor able to make the most of the dark.

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