“The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat” Review

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Here is a film that keeps baiting. From the title to the climax, it always feels like there’s untapped potential. For starters, no, this is not a film about the actual Supremes ensemble playing at a place called Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat. Perhaps if the non-linear drama of the three friends was strong enough to carry this picture, one wouldn’t feel as deprived.

Based on the novel of the same title, the film starts off decently enough with three young women gravitating towards each other. Odette is the narrating force who relays the specifics of her birth in a tree and the superstitions of how she is bound by fate as her younger self (Kyanna Simone) grows up to learn harsh lessons. Barbara Jean (Tati Gabrielle) comes from an abusive family and tries to find her way out of the darkness into the more forgiving arms of restaurant owner Earl (Tony Winters). Clarice (Abigail Achiri) has a chance of becoming a musical hit with her piano skills. All three of these women meet at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, where they form a bond in a booth.

Skip ahead years later and the girls have become women. The older Odette (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), Barbara Jean (Sanaa Lathan), and Clarice (Uzo Aduba) all have new concerns beyond asking out boys or considering careers. Now, they’re worrying about cancer, infidelity, old flames, and alcoholism. The past creeps back into their lives as they’re reminded of past traumas. A swirl of bitter arguments and joyful exchanges swamp the screen as these women continue to carry on, led with narration by Odette and her desires to turn her life into the palindrome she feels fate has dealt her.

Watching this film felt like watching a best-of video that stitches together the best scenes of cherished melodramas. There are several scenes where Ellis-Taylor, Lathan, and Abuda get to flex their acting muscles with their best blustering and bashing. Rarely, however, does any of this build. So many scenes feel as though they have to hit some powerful note before moving on to the next mid-life issue. In one scene, one of the women being cheated on confronts her husband’s mistress at a strip club. Their exchange has some teeth, but it feels like these fangs are from another movie.

It doesn’t help that the moody music, glossy camera work, and poetic narration further amplify the melodrama. There’s an all-hands-on-deck motivation that comes off desparate in the movie’s attempt to make sure that every scene will either jerk some tears or evoke a cheer. This transforms the film into a mess. It’s hard to feel anything when these characters, flashing between past and present, grow more through funerals, diagnosis, and marital status. There’s a certain mundanity that arises with so many of these moving movements that become passive, where so much is going on, and it all just comes off as noise.

Melodrama stumbles around in the dark with The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat. It’s a smattering of dramatic scenes from a half-dozen movies that look pretty good from the outside. Presenting these lives less as progressive stories and more like a sampler, it leaves me hungry for a more complete picture.