Haven't we seen all this before

Rating: 6/10 (20 November 2005)

For the second time in as many years, an autobiography of a music legend is rushed to the silver screen after the untimely death of their star character. Where Jamie Foxx channeled the late Ray Charles to awards glory in 2004, Joaquin Phoenix tries to emulate country music legend Johnny Cash in the new James Mangold film, Walk the Line.
The comparison between Ray and Walk the Line are unescapable. Both films followed the music icons from their childhood through to the height of their stardom. Both films dealt with the drug abuse that almost ruined both of their careers. And both films spend a good deal of screen time on the various women in their lives.
In Walk the Line, the woman who most influences Johnny Cash is June Carter (Resse Witherspoon, Legally Blonde). After we watch as Johnny survives the death of his older brother and his struggle to cut his first record and go on tour, Mr. Cash meets June Carter at a small auditorium gig that includes Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley on the same card. Although already married, Cash is immediately smitten by June's beauty and ability to communicate to an audience. You don't need to have seen the True E! Hollywood Story to know where this will lead.
In truth, knowing where things will lead is exactly the problem with Walk the Line. It has been done before. Many times. A musical artist that becomes a sensation in a short period of time, gets hooked on drugs and then becomes clean towards the end of the film. Ho-hum. How many times have we seen that in the past ten years. Two films, Ray and Some Kind of Monster took similar paths just months before and Walk the Line gives us nothing new or interesting to marvel at as we take the already beaten path.
What does save Walk the Line from the mediocre are the stellar performances by the two leads (Phoenix and Witherspoon). Joaquin learned to play the guitar from scratch for the role and even does all his own singing (take that Jamie Foxx!). His walk with the favoring limp and the way Cash talked out of the side of his mouth are mimicked to perfection by Phoenix who is sure to get his second Academy Award nomination when the are announced in just a few months.
But performances can only take a film so far, and Walk the Line falls short of providing us any new insight into the world of a rock star that most of us growing up wishing to one day be a part of. In fact, the film spends too much time just mulling around that when we finally get to what should be the hi-light of the film ie. the concert at Folsom Prison that became one of the best live albums of all-time, we are not jumping out of our seats, clapping to the music having enjoyed the journey to this particular historic event.
Instead, we meander with a man who never gained his fathers full respect, never was a good husband to his first wife and never lived a life that was so extraordinary that people would shell out hard earned dollars just to see how a legend walked the line.
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