Talk to Me

last updated 8 January 2015

Talk to Me, the biopic of disc jockey Petey Greene, 'œradiates more energy than almost anything else onscreen this summer,' said Ruthe Stein in the San Francisco Chronicle. Full of colorful fashion, rousing R&B, and the spirit of civil-rights activism, this movie takes a passionate view of Washington, D.C.'s African-American community in the 1960s. Director Kasi Lemmons' film is fresh and entertaining, largely because of Don Cheadle's charismatic performance as Greene. Ralph Waldo 'œPetey' Greene began his career entertaining inmates on a prison radio show. After finagling a gig at a D.C. station with the help of radio executive Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Greene becomes a huge hit with listeners, thanks to his on-air high jinks. The story's initial arc is fairly conventional, and Lemmons can't help touching on several clichÃ©s, said Kyle Smith in the New York Post. As station boss and stand-in for the man, Martin Sheen is forced to sputter lines such as 'œWhat in blue blazes is going on here?' But this movie 'œstarts out broad and schematic only to surprise you with its subtlety as it unfolds,' said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. At first, Greene and Hughes play into black stereotypes of the loudmouth and the 'œOreo' respectively. But in the movie's second half, the men exhibit complex personalities whose interplay provides one of the year's most interesting onscreen relationships.

Rating: R