General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Respect (2021 film)

Respect is a 2021 American biographical drama about the singer Aretha Franklin, directed by Liesl Tommy in her feature film debut and starring Jennifer Hudson as Franklin. It follows Franklin from her childhood singing in her father's church choir in Detroit to her international superstardom, tracing her effort to make music on her own terms.¹^•² The film was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and grossed $32,882,823 worldwide against a mixed critical reception that centered on Hudson's performance.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Release	August 13, 2021 (theaters, wide); September 28, 2021 (streaming); distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer¹
Director / writer	Liesl Tommy, her feature directorial debut; screenplay by Tracey Scott Wilson from a story by Callie Khouri⁵^•⁴
Lead	Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin, a role Franklin herself chose Hudson to play⁶
Runtime / rating	2 h 25 m; rated PG-13¹
Box office	$24,278,399 domestic, $8,604,424 international, $32,882,823 worldwide; domestic opening $8,807,513³
Critical scores	68% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (192 reviews) with a 95% audience Popcornmeter; Metascore 61 based on 43 critic reviews¹^•⁴
Awards	One Golden Globe nomination; NAACP Image Awards with 1 win and 6 nominations; 4 Hollywood Music in Media Awards nominations⁴

Spoilers

Story

The film opens in Detroit in the early 1950s, where young Aretha is raised by her father, the Baptist minister and civil rights activist C. L. Franklin, while missing her largely absent mother Barbara, who died when Aretha was ten.⁹^•⁶ The household's party guests included major musical figures; in the film's opening party scene, the pianist Art Tatum accompanies the child, and Dinah Washington greets her.² The script also depicts childhood trauma: the death of her mother, sexual abuse by an older man, and pregnancy at twelve.²

The narrative then follows her career moves. In 1960, the year she turned eighteen, her father decided she would sign with John Hammond at Columbia Records, where she was placed with all-white, all-male string players and recorded standards; by 1963 she was performing as a jazz singer at the Village Vanguard, where a charged encounter with Dinah Washington pushed her toward deciding what she wanted to sing.² Her move to Atlantic Records and the Muscle Shoals recording sessions mark her artistic breakthrough, and the film dramatizes her reinvention of Otis Redding's "Respect" as her personal anthem, including the scene in which her sisters, riffing on their nickname for her, devise the song's "Re-re-re" hook.⁵^•⁹

Franklin's civil rights activism runs through the middle of the film: she was a friend and supporter of Martin Luther King Jr., played by Gilbert Glenn Brown, and the film shows her singing at his funeral.¹⁰^•¹ The film is also straightforward about her drinking, overwork, and the violence in her marriage to Ted White.⁹^•¹⁰ The climactic and concluding sequence is the 1972 live recording of the gospel album Amazing Grace; a title card affirms that it became Franklin's best-selling album.²

Production and casting

Franklin was directly involved in choosing her screen self. After Jennifer Hudson won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Effie in the 2006 film adaptation of Dreamgirls, she and Franklin met to discuss a possible biopic; producers Scott Bernstein and Harvey Mason Jr. had approached Franklin about developing a film of her life. Franklin told Hudson, "I've made my decision, and it's you I want to play me," and asked her not to tell anyone. Record executive Clive Davis, who produced both Franklin and Hudson at Arista Records, made the casting official on January 27, 2018, while introducing Hudson at a pre-Grammy gala.⁶ Hudson also served as an executive producer on the film.⁶

Liesl Tommy directed. A South African-born stage director who made history in 2016 as the first woman of color nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play (for Eclipsed), Tommy had never directed a feature film before Respect.⁵^•⁷ She said she wanted the film to feel the way listening to Franklin's music feels, and she required that everyone in the film sing live, which shaped her casting around notable voices: six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald as Franklin's mother Barbara and Broadway veteran Tituss Burgess as the Reverend Dr. James Cleveland.⁵^•⁷

The supporting cast pairs the family and the music business: Forest Whitaker as Franklin's father, the minister C. L. Franklin; Marlon Wayans as her husband and manager Ted White; Marc Maron as Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler; Tate Donovan as Columbia Records producer John Hammond; Mary J. Blige as the singer Dinah Washington; and Skye Dakota Turner as young Aretha.⁴ Costume designer Clint Ramos, a longtime collaborator of Tommy's, researched Franklin's life through autobiographies, Civil Rights Movement material, and photographs, noting that very little photography of Franklin exists from before her Columbia Records signing.⁸

Reception

Critics were divided, with Hudson's performance as the near-universal point of agreement. The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus reads: "This standard-issue biopic falls shy of its subject's transcendent brilliance, but Jennifer Hudson's starring performance absolutely commands Respect."¹ On Metacritic the film scored 61 out of 100 from 43 reviews, categorized as generally favorable, with 23 positive, 19 mixed, and 1 negative review; the user score was 7.1 from 59 ratings.⁴

Positive reviews concentrated on the music. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle gave it 100, writing that the film "has everything you could hope for in a musical biopic."¹¹ The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney called it "a powerful account of self-actualization spanning 20 formative years."¹¹ Peter Debruge of Variety noted the pleasure of hearing Hudson re-create Franklin's key songs, from her early Columbia jazz standards to her reinvention of the Otis Redding single that gives the film its name.¹¹

Criticism targeted the biopic formula. Richard Brody, a film critic who has written for The New Yorker since 1999, argued that the film's informational, hint-like delivery of Franklin's life events deprives the character of her own point of view, silencing her extraordinary qualities outside her musicianship, though he judged Hudson's performance capable of nearly saving the movie.² Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian called it a "one-note Aretha Franklin chronicle" that follows every biopic beat and skates over the difficult material, including her two children from an early relationship.¹⁰ Brian Truitt of USA Today placed it alongside other recent musical biopics such as Judy and The United States vs. Billie Holiday as films that never reach the greatness of their stars.⁴ Audience response was warmer: the Popcornmeter stood at 95% from more than 2,500 verified ratings.¹

Box office

The film earned $8,807,513 in its domestic opening and finished with $24,278,399 in the United States and Canada (73.8% of its total) and $8,604,424 internationally, for a worldwide total of $32,882,823.³ Its rollout ran from August 12 to December 17, 2021 across 21 markets. The largest international markets were the United Kingdom ($2,952,289), France ($1,171,100), and Germany ($1,027,852).³

Awards

The film received one Golden Globe nomination and four Hollywood Music in Media Awards nominations. At the NAACP Image Awards it won one award and received six nominations, and it was nominated for the WIN Award for Outstanding Feature Film.⁴^•¹²

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026