It’s weird to think about Jimi Hendrix (Outkast’s Andre 3000) being just another guy trying to pay the bills, but before he was discovered by Linda Keith (Imogen Poots, Need for Speed) that’s all he was. “All is by My Side” chronicles the year before Hendrix set fire to the stage in Monterey (literally).
Back then he was just a struggling musician who got noticed by the right person. The Hendrix estate was not consulted at all for the making of the film. Consequently, the movie paints a somewhat uneven and unusual picture of the guitar god. At times the flick feels more like a mood piece than a coherent film based on someone’s life. It borders on tedious; sometimes seeming like just a series of conversations that are flashes into the life of a music icon.
But there’s something intriguing about the experience of a biopic that strays from the obligatory mythologizing and dips into candid snapshots — for better or for worse. Here we see Jimi Hendrix, the man, through a sort of unwieldy temperament that would do its protagonist proud.
Ultimately it’s too long and unfocused to handle its lofty goals. Writer/director John Ridley (who also penned the script for 12 Years a Slave) made the decision to live by Hendrix’s “come what may” lifestyle. Andre 3000 nails the rambling style of Hendrix’s cadence, but there’s not enough agency there for the audience to stay invested in. Part of what made Hendrix a household name was the spontaneity and creativity. Those feelings are all there — and would make for a nice subversion of the stale biopic formula — but without Jimi’s full energy this film won’t be remembered like its leading man.
Pulp Diction 