LUTHER: NEVER TOO MUCH (Sundance FF 2024) – Review by Leslie Combemale
Even after the popular Brit-crime TV show Luther, starring Idris Elba, aired, the moniker LUTHER meant only one thing. To this day, the name virtuosic singer/producer/songwriter Luther, Luther Vandross that is, belongs to a rare group of stars that the world knows using even just one name. Now documentarian Dawn Porter, who is responsible for award-winning films Bobby Kennedy for President, John Lewis: Good Trouble, and The Lady Bird Diaries, tells the story of Vandross’s formative early years, his career, and his adult life, in Luther: Never Too Much. A colossal talent lost before his time when he died of complications from a stroke and heart trouble at 52, the performer deserves every moment he and his genius is remembered onscreen.
To be honest, as a lifelong fan of Luther’s music, I struggled with whether I could write an honest, objective review of a film about him. I learned to sing with more emotion and vocal expression through putting on his records, and pretending to sing duets with him. I saw him in concert 5 times, including at least one tour it turns out is represented in the documentary. I love his background vocals on David Bowie’s Fame. I love his gorgeous interpretation of other people’s songs, the way he made Karen Carpenter’s Superstar and A House is Not a Home, originally sung by Dionne Warwick not only his own, but unforgettable. I love the songs he wrote, produced, and sang the hell out of, like Never Too Much, a song used as the film’s title. So what I’m saying is, I love him. It turns out, I needn’t have worried. Luther: Never Too Much is very much targeted to people like me, his fans. Curious younger R&B fans would already know who he is, so I doubt the film will bring more converts to the “Church of Luther”. What it does do, however, is give an insightful look at the artist, in his own words, and through the words of those closest to him, and through rare footage of concerts, interviews, and tv appearances. The documentary reveals some of his inspiration, aspirations, his inner struggles, and his greatest desires, which makes for a sometimes joyful, sometimes sad experience.
Porter starts with archival footage from the 60s and 708s, showing Vandross’s early years, what inspired him (he studied female performers like Aretha Franklin and Dianne Warwick) and playing interviews in which he talks about his early career. She shows clips of Vandross in Listen My Brother, a large group that appeared, among other places, on Sesame Street. They performed there early in Sesame Street history, bringing a rare show of Black excellence to children’s programming that must have had a powerful impact on Black children and their parents at the time. She follows his career from there to his backup work on records and in concerts with David Bowie, Roberta Flack, and Bette Midler, onto his commercials, and then to his break with the song Never Too Much. From there, we see his career and fame skyrocket, due in no small part to his work ethic, perfectionism, and holistic approach to all aspects of his concerts and recordings. Interspersed throughout are candid interviews with some of his closest friends and collaborators, people who worked with him his entire career like Fonzi Thornton, Robin Clark, and Carlos Alomar, all of whom started with him early on, and continued as he grew successful as a solo artist.
Porter doesn’t shy away from some of the darker experiences in Vandross’s life, including the near fatal accident that killed one friend and injured another. She also examines his consistent challenges with not only his weight, but the way the public and press obsessed about it, making an already difficult part of his life even worse. One wonders if by her including that aspect of his life, she perpetuates an aspect of it that he preferred wasn’t centered in discussions about him. It was, though, something that plagued him his whole life, and arguably contributed to his early death from a debilitating stroke and subsequent heart attack.
If you’re looking for a celebrity insider look into Vandross’s ‘secret gay life’, you won’t find it here. His entire career he remained private about his sexual orientation, neither confirming nor denying it to the world. A few gay critics take issue with the fact that Porter didn’t delve more deeply into his gayness, and how not being ‘out and proud’ impacted his weight and generally wellbeing, given that if he did have a relationship, he’d have had to keep it secret. I found the approach of the friends and colleagues who loved him, who wanted to honor how he lived his life, by not discussing his sexuality onscreen, to be a testament to their respect for him. Porter does, however, show how having a longterm love relationship, which eluded him, was the one thing he saw as missing in his life. He himself talks about his loneliness, pondering in public forums about why he never found a partner, a subject that inspired his most personal song, “Any Love”.
Overall, the film is about the joy of Luther, his music, his love of the craft, and his love of his friends and fans. At one point, Robin Clark mentions the spectacular dresses worn by his backup singers, and the fact that he often designed and even made them himself, a man who ultimately won 8 Grammys and had dozens of nominations. No detail was too small, and all of those details came together into one hell of a show. Vandross’s himself said, “We don’t play with your concert money.” He’s not kidding.
In the many scenes of live performance shown in the documentary, he not only never hits a wrong note, he often soars, making risky and emotional vocal choices that show why he is now considered one of the best R&B performers of all time. In those and many other moments, for Luther fans, Porter’s film is a celebration.
4 out of 5 stars
