The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat (2024)
Directed by: Tina Mabry
Premise: A trio of Black women nicknamed The Supremes grow up in the late 1960s and hang out at a local diner. Decades later, the women cope with the consequences of choices they made in their youth and face the challenges of middle age.
What Works: The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat is primarily a story of female friendship, with part of the story taking place in the late 1960s and the rest of the events set in the present day. The movie works best in the later years. Sanaa Lathan, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and Uzo Aduba play the older versions of the characters and the three actresses have the convincing rapport of women who have been friends for many years. Each of them gets some specific story turf. Lathan’s character is an alcoholic, Ellis-Taylor’s character faces a health crisis, and Aduba’s character copes with infidelity and unfulfilled dreams. As in most friend groups, the women are in each other’s business and the filmmakers weave their stories together. The emphasis shifts from scene to scene as one woman’s problem becomes the focus and the other two opine on the issue and support their friend.
What Doesn’t: The casting of the young actresses creates a discontinuity between the two parts of the story. Kyanna Simone, Tati Gabrielle, and Abigail Achiri give fine performances but they don’t look much like the older women they are portraying. The plotting of The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat is spotty and the pacing is stop and go. The story deals with a lot. Each woman has a very dramatic conflict but the film doesn’t give each subplot adequate room to breathe. There are some really big developments in each of the women’s lives. The flashback sequences include some heavy developments including murder but these are mostly brushed off as the film pivots to its next conflict. There’s not much sense of rising tension nor is there much connection between the two temporal parts of the story. The scenes taking place in the past feel disconnected from the present which is the exact opposite of what the filmmakers are trying to accomplish and the film remains on the surface of each character, never getting into their internal life in a meaningful way. The movie suffers when it goes for big dramatic moments. The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat is frequently maudlin and melodramatic. Both the acting and the music score are ostentatious in ways that feel forced and artificial.
Disc extras: Available on Hulu.
Bottom Line: The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat has a good cast but the storytelling is overstuffed and clunky. It feels like a miniseries that has been cut down to a feature length.
Episode: #1012 (September 8, 2024)