My Review of "I Am Woman"

I Am Woman is a biopic of the singer Helen Reddy. Admittingly, before watching this movie I had no idea who Helen Reddy was. I've only heard one of her songs through a Simpsons' episode a long time ago but didn't understand the full impact she had on society. Luckily this movie was made to make me aware of all of the positive impacts that Helen had in the world.

The movie starts off in the 1960s. Helen is a single mother from Australia with a dream of becoming a professional singer. She recently won a contest to have a recording contract in New York. She flies all the way to New York only to realize that the prize wasn't exactly what she anticipated. Instead of a recording contract she's told that it became an audition for a recording contract.

Throughout this movie we're going to see a ton of sexism that women had to go through. The record executives just didn't want Helen because they truly believed that the public only wanted male rock singers. They weren't open to any other alternatives.

Still Helen was tenacious and adamant about becoming a star. She stays in New York as a lounge singer but still gets screwed over with lower pay. The club owners realize she's an immigrant from Australia and the mere fact she's a woman gave them an added bonus for making excuses to pay her less.

As Helen mingles with the New York art scene she's met up with a few ambitious friends. They eventually all make it in the music industry in their own way. Through her networking she meets up with a man named Jeff.

Now I know they try to make Jeff out to be a nice guy in the beginning but there's something about him that made him scream sleaze. I knew it from the minute I saw him. It's actually quite obvious, maybe because I knew it's the 60's and all the guys were chauvinists at the time. There were times when I would be wondering what the heck is she doing with this guy. Alas, the two get together regardless.

They become a dynamic duo in both their personal life and their business life. You'd see how they go from rags to riches in a matter of moments. That could have been the story I guess but there has to be some downfall and there are some but not too much.

That's one of the drawbacks to this movie. It seemed a little too much of a sanitized story. There are some bad things that happen in this movie but I don't know if it really warranted a 2 hour runtime. Much of the movie is Helen just singing her song in full. There's no montage or anything it's just her singing on stage. The terrible thing is sometimes the lip-synching wasn't exactly perfect. You'd see that sometimes there's a like a millisecond timing that's off and you can obviously tell that it's an obvious lip-sync. It's very distracting and shame on them for releasing it like this.

With the amount of songs that she sings in this movie I wonder if they truly had enough material to fit a movie runtime. Perhaps this would have been better as a television special instead of a full out theatrical release?

I also found that Helen was too happy all the time. Throughout this movie she's always smiling and looking glamorous even when she's going through some rough times. One would expect that she would have had stronger emotions for some of the sexist things that she had to go through. Then again she did grow up and lived through a time when women knew nothing but living through oppression. She could have been dying inside but couldn't show it on the outside. It could also have been representing how professional she was. She wouldn't allow business to interfere with her personal life. Maybe the whole thing was a front because she couldn't show that she was upset. Of course there were moments that she did display how upset she was but it's only one small section of the movie.

The only thing that I found lacking in this movie was more emotional content. It was great to learn so much about Helen but I would have liked to know more about her personal trials and tribulations. They never go into too much about her marriage. There's just glimpses of things that had happened. Her relationship with her kids isn't even explained that much. There's only some cold scenes where her oldest child shuns her for pursuing her career and then years later she begs her to come back to singing. It's really weird and the flow isn't there. It's like there's huge gaps of information missing in this movie.

Overall, I was still happy to learn about Helen Reddy but I really wish there was more. They used a lot of dazzling performances that took up a lot of the run time of this movie when they should have used that runtime to tell a better story. Make the flow a little better and give us more interest in the character instead of her accomplishments. I have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. After seeing this movie I realize the importance of Helen Reddy but I hope they do another one that's a little more refined than this one.