Not Such an Experience
The story of rock legend Jimi Hendrix (Wood Harris) takes us from his father buying him an old guitar, through his early days supporting various bands and stars, including Little Richard who ended up firing him when he started to be outshone by Hendrix's flamboyance on stage. After being persuaded to come to England, where he got the chance to jam with Eric Clapton, Hendrix forms the Jimi Hendrix Experience and after some bad choices by his management strives for musical perfection much to the annoyance of others who find his behaviour flabbergasting.
As a teenager I got heavily into the music of Jimi Hendrix, it was that phase in my life where I wanted to play guitar like a Rock god, the phase passed but my love of Hendrix's music didn't. But whilst I love the music I never really bothered looking into Jimi Hendrix himself, his life and so on. Basically what I am saying is that I am no expert on Jimi Hendrix but know the minimum. Unfortunately after watching "Hendrix", the made for TV biopic, I don't feel like I know any more than I did before hand as there is no depth to this movie at all and at times feels like someone has taken the basic facts of Hendrix's life and turned them into a movie.
What this ends up meaning is that "Hendrix" dishes up a scene where we learn something such as changing his name to Jimi and then we have the recreation of an iconic Hendrix moment either side be it jamming with Clapton or following The Who on stage where at the end of Wild Thing he set fire to his guitar. Yes it is still entertaining and Wood Harris does a decent job of playing the legend and grows in to the part but it almost feels like someone has taken a short bio of Hendrix off of the net and then dramatized it without trying to show the real Hendrix or what drove him on. I suppose for those who watch only having heard a couple of Hendrix songs this might end up informative but it comes up short for anyone else.
What this all boils down to is that "Hendrix" is entertaining and does a decent job of recreating original Hendrix footage but at the same time it never manages to dig beneath the surface and so only ends up like someone has taken the well known facts of Hendrix's life and squeezed them in between the recreation of the footage of him performing which makes it only okay at best.
