Paint by numbers musical biopic that hits all the cliches; crooked management, a "complex" love story, father-son drama and some genuinely decent concert sequences.

The many flashbacks and heavy Jamaican patois don't do the narrative any favors (subtitles needed for this one!) Cast performances are mostly solid but unspectacular. Lashana Lynch's Rita Marley is a highlight. Kingsley Ben-Adir's Bob is likeable but lightweight - at the end we don't get any sense of what really drove Bob as a musician or a strongly religious man. None of the supporting characters are sketched out much at all, so the film depends on these two performances to carry it, with mixed results.

Overall a superficial examining of an important influential artist that could've been so much more.

I was and am a big Marley fan. I was alive when he was and couldn't wait fore his next record. He was not merely a revolutionary music maker, he was a revolutionary person. He deserved a bio pic that reflected his enormous talent, contribution, and sacrifice. This is not that film.

It's not completely worthless. The acting by Marley and his wife is exceptional, and her work deserves Academy Award notice. The photography is good and the music, of course, is wonderful, though the visuals accompanying the music leaves a lot to be desired.

The main problem is the direction. I felt like I was watching a film about Marley but was otherwise not engaged. That's a big negative in a film about Bob Marley. He deserves more.