I’m trying to avoid Spoilers, but I may not be able to … so if you have not seen this movie already, read at your own risk.

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Just a “scosh” before my generation’s era of music was the invention and the re-invention of James Brown.

Otherwise known as ‘The Godfather of Soul’, Brown was more along my mother’s generation, but like Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna — all of whom surfaced during my generation — the name of James Brown was taught to me as a child; and into future generations and from here on, that name will never be forgotten.

Such a common “John Smith” kind of name for a man who, when you mention him to others, he’s the first (and probably the ONLY) James Brown anyone thinks of.

There was 1950s James Brown, 1960s James Brown, 1970s James Brown, the 1980s when “Negroes” suddenly became kind of “nose-tooting uppity” about the squealing screaming era of James Brown, and then his 1990s revival period.

Shortly afterward, just halfway into the newest New Millennia, at the age of 73, James Brown left this Earth and went on to even greater things. The Year was 2006, it was Christmas Day.

In the early 1970s, I will never forget my own mother coming home with an eight-page color brochure program from his concert in Columbus. Just a teenage girl myself, we were flipping through that program half the night looking at all the photos, and the legacy of James Brown was handed to us just that way. He must have been the highest paid showboat in the business at the time, if his people could afford a full-color brochure laden with all kinds of concert and publicity photographs. It wasn’t cheap to do, even back then.

Never in the history of music has a musician, artist, or performer ever been so “copied,” including by the main man behind this biopic, Mick Jagger (“Mr. Rolling Stones”) himself. If you sit for a minute and dwell, you definitely start to catch several glimpses of Prince [Rogers Nelson], and quite a few other performers, in every magical move of this film.

I learned a few things about James Brown that I did not know, and a few things that I now wish I did not know. But what is seen cannot be unseen, especially that “Hallmark moment” when he took the most infamous photograph of his life just before spending another four years of his storied and fanatical life behind bars.

The movie ends by telling the viewers during the credit roll that some of the scenarios were fictionalized in order to give the movie its ‘edge’, and the first fictionalized character was the guy who played James Brown himself.

Chadwick Boseman started off as close as one can get to a ridiculously unbelievable caricature, but once you get around to remembering that James Brown was just that, a caricature of himself whenever he was onstage, Boseman starts to breathe life into the nature of Brown and before you know it, the “man himself” comes back to life right in front of your eyes. You almost “got the feeling” that a reincarnation has happened as Boseman suddenly slips on Brown like a glove made just for him.

Based on some scenes from this flick, JB probably showed up during filming, slapped the actor upside the head a couple of times and yelled at him “You trying to do ME? In this movie?! Negro, let me tell you something ’bout James Brown, something you don’t know nothing ’bout James Brown, son!”

In all, it was a moving and highly emotional tribute to Mr. Brown, both as an icon, and as a Black man.

It dredged up memories of the day when I finally saw him perform live myself at Classic Chastain, just about two months before he entered into ancestry at Emory/Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta of congestive heart failure brought on by a bad bout with pneumonia. He was in rare form that warm evening, and everybody in the audience was amazed that he was still dancing–in his 70s–like he was still in his 30s.

The most beautiful tribute of all to us sensitive-minded folk who can be very protective of Mr. Brown’s memory?

Wasn’t nary a word said about his “Coming to America” era, it was all “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” Martin Luther King Jr. historically-correct. Six full decades of hellish nightmare-ish daydream blinding fury packaged in one Black man who, while performing for some white folks at a ski lodge, said he felt like he was at a “honky ho-down.” LOL!

JB was most definitely a machine, and a man. He was twenty years ahead of his time, and then some. He may have been 73 when he passed on, but he was no older than 53 in his spirit and soul.

Funny and terrifying at the same time, or so they tell us, he had all of his loyal followers on pins and needles from the second he walked into a room until the moment he left, and Boseman brought that point home … literally … in your face.

Brown was, indeed, THE “hardest working man in show business”. He left no room for doubt about that.

We give this one the high five, two thumbs up; and for those who haven’t seen it already … a GINORMOUS recommended viewing.

Ain’t but one question left: Did Little Richard (aka “Richard Penniman”), did he really …?