What's Love Got to Do with It: Tina Turner Biopic | Movie Review
It's 1AM, it's hot and I'm being stingy and not turning the AC on and using the ceiling fan instead — unless there's a heat wave going on, I refuse to turn it on!
I've watched a bunch of Tyler Perry movies, and a bunch of other strong, black female character movies. Now, I don't know if the black community is aware of this, but the stereotypes that they feel are discriminating against them, are the same ones that they display about themselves in Hollywood movies — I mean, seriously, have you ever seen a happy Tyler Perry movie!?!
Everything is about rape, incest, abuse, drugs, etc. I've watched Precious, For Colored Girls, Waiting to Exhale, What's Love Got to Do With It, etc. These are some sad-ass movies! These movies enforces the stereotype about black men and women!
What's Love Got to Do With It is a great biopic, it's one of my favorite mobie genres — because it's a bio-pic about Tina Turner, and I loved her music.
I grew up listening to a lot of 80's music.
I love bio-pics, and I felt very sad that she lived such a hard life, even when she became famous and all. I'm glad that she found her strength through the Buddhist religion — everyone's gotta have something to believe in to get them through the hard times.
Domestic violence is no joke.
If you're in a situation, you need to help yourself; you're the only person to do it.
Never become dependent on a man for your happiness, and especially not financially. I know so many women on a personal level, who felt they couldn't leave an abusive relationship because they didn't have the means to support themselves.
Do what you need to do to defend yourself, and especially if there are children involved — leave, but never just take it, because it WON'T STOP, and he WON'T change.
People like that just weren't raised right, but even that is not a 100% excuse — you have two options; you can either continue the cycle of violence, or you can overcome it.
What's Love Got to Do with It (1993) is one of the strongest music biopics ever made, but it's also something more uncomfortable and powerful than a typical rise-to-fame story.
Most musical biographies spend their time celebrating success. This film spends much of its runtime showing how a woman survives terror, humiliation, and domestic violence before finally reclaiming her life.
Based on Tina Turner's autobiography I, Tina, it stars Angela Bassett as Tina Turner and Laurence Fishburne as Ike Turner. Both received Oscar nominations for their performances, and the film remains one of the most acclaimed biopics of the 1990s.
The movie begins with Anna Mae Bullock, a young woman from Tennessee with an extraordinary voice. When she meets Ike Turner, he recognizes her talent immediately. At first, Ike appears charismatic, ambitious, and supportive. The early sections of the film do a good job showing why Tina fell for him in the first place.
Fishburne doesn't play Ike as a monster from the beginning. He plays him as a charming man whose darker qualities slowly emerge. That gradual transformation makes what follows far more disturbing because the audience understands how someone could become trapped in the relationship.
As the story progresses, the film becomes increasingly difficult to watch. Ike's drug use, jealousy, and need for control grow worse. Tina is subjected to repeated physical and emotional abuse while simultaneously becoming a major star.
One of the film's most effective themes is that public success does not protect someone from private suffering. Onstage she is a force of nature. At home she is living in fear.
The film's most famous scenes are not actually the concert sequences, although those are phenomenal.
Angela Bassett doesn't sing the songs herself — the recordings are Tina's — but her physical performance is so convincing that you forget you're watching an actress. Roger Ebert noted that Bassett's synchronization with Tina's energy, movement, and personality is so complete that it feels like you're watching Tina herself perform.
What elevates the movie above many biopics is Bassett's refusal to portray Tina as merely a victim. She shows Tina's humor, stubbornness, pride, and fighting spirit.
The most triumphant moment isn't a concert.
It's the night Tina finally leaves Ike with almost nothing but her name. The famous Ramada Inn sequence, where a battered Tina seeks refuge after escaping, remains one of the most emotionally powerful scenes in any biographical film. Critics and audiences frequently cite it as the movie's turning point.
Laurence Fishburne deserves almost as much praise as Bassett. His Ike Turner is terrifying because he never becomes a cartoon villain. He's charming one moment, explosive the next.
Many viewers who saw the film in the 1990s found it difficult to separate Fishburne from the character afterward because his performance was so convincing. Even decades later, movie fans frequently point to his portrayal as one of the most frightening depictions of domestic abuse in mainstream cinema.
One thing worth knowing is that Tina Turner herself had mixed feelings about the movie.
Although she greatly praised Angela Bassett's portrayal of her, she later said the film changed many details and portrayed events differently than she remembered them. She felt some aspects emphasized victimhood more than she preferred. So while the film captures the emotional truth of her struggle, it should not be viewed as a perfectly accurate historical document.
The screenplay occasionally simplifies events and compresses timelines, as most biopics do, but the performances are extraordinary. Angela Bassett delivers the kind of performance people talk about decades later. In fact, many film fans still argue she should have won the Oscar that year, and become the first black woman in history to win the Oscar for Best Actress — it eventually went to Halle Berry for Monster's Ball in 2002, nearly a decade later.
Personally, I felt Angela Bassett should have won in 1993 instead.
What makes What's Love Got to Do with It endure is that it isn't really about becoming famous.
It's about survival.
The concerts are exciting, the music is terrific, but the lasting image is Tina refusing to let Ike define the rest of her life. By the end, the movie feels less like a music biography and more like the story of a woman fighting her way back to herself.
That's why it still resonates decades later.
