What's Love Got to Do with It

A powerful, joyful, raw, energetically acted bio-pic detailing the joys and pain of the on- and offstage lives of blues rockers Ike and Tina Turner. [11 Jun 1993, p.C2]

The movie is far from perfect — it has the kind of clunky, episodic script that has bedeviled just about every musical biopic in history — yet it’s driven by an electrifying soundtrack and by two performances of staggering power. Read full review

A passionate personal and professional drama that hits both the high and low notes of an extraordinary life and career. An immensely enjoyable saga that's tough, funny and touching. Read full review

What's Love Got to Do With It ranks as one of the most harrowing, uncompromising showbiz biographies I've ever seen. Read full review

It goes for broke on high-roller, high-energy scenes, and wins big. [11 Jun 1993, p.41]

Angela Bassett gives a superbly versatile performance as the heroine, and Laurence Fishburne's portrayal of Ike Turner consolidates his status as one of the most expressive and intelligent actors in movies today. [18 Jun 1993, p.13]

You may not respect What’s Love Got to Do With It, but enjoying it is inescapable. A high-energy mixture of spectacular music, vigorous acting and cliched situations, this is a rough-and-rowdy fairy tale with a feminist subtext, and if that sounds perplexing, Love so pumps up the volume you won’t have much time to think about it. Read full review

This immensely enjoyable biography of songstress Tina Turner [from her and Kurt Loder's book I, Tina] is a passionate personal and professional drama that hits both the high and low notes of an extraordinary career. Read full review

A surprisingly good and compelling film, that is made by its two leads. Read full review

The brilliant, mercurial portrayal of Ike Turner by Laurence Fishburne, formerly known as Larry, is what elevates What's Love Got to Do With It beyond the realm of run-of-the-mill biography. Read full review

For a movie full of hairraising depictions of wife beating, What's Love Got To Do With It is a rousingly entertaining musical biopic. And that's what a movie about the unstoppable Tina Turner should be: sassy, playful, soulful and triumphant, like Tina herself. [21 Jun 1993, p.66]

Although ultimately a triumphant story, this biography doesn't see its subject through rose-colored glasses. It takes chances, and that's why it works. Read full review

By the time the real Tina Turner is seen performing the title hit at film's end, director Brian Gibson has achieved his overall goal: What's Love Got To Do With It may not bring anything new to the biopic genre, but it inspires renewed respect and appreciation for a woman who has earned every break in her amazing career. Read full review

Fishburne and Bassett are both extraordinary, and though the story is inevitably slanted to Tina's perspective, Fishburne makes Ike a complex and compelling presence. Read full review

The musical numbers are exhilarating, and the story unfolds against a delightful, ever-changing series of set designs, haircuts and fashions. But it's the performances in this look at the often- harrowing relationship between Tina and Ike Turner that you'll remember. [09 Jul 1993, p.G5]

What's Love Got to Do With It isn't the best musical biography of all time, but it's an unusually satisfying one, and a tremendous showcase for the splendid Bassett. [11 Jun 1993, p.C1]

Oscar-nominated Angela Bassett suffers and flaunts the dresses in this smashingly performed Tina Turner bio - a rock-feminist manifesto that also earned Laurence Fishburne a nomination for humanizing Ike Turner, the Svengali-husband and Menace II Tina with a wandering Ikette eye. Brian Gibson, who directed HBO's as-good The Josephine Baker Story, rarely exceeds the parameters of a competent TV movie; numbers get truncated, and there's minimal period detail over a 1958-83 time span. Yet in a movie inevitably made or broken by its leads, the nominations were justified. [25 Mar 1994, p.3D]

As a truthful account of the life of Tina Turner or as a faithful adaptation of her as-told-to autobiography, I, Tina, this 1993 film can't be taken too seriously. But as a powerhouse showcase for the acting talents of Angela Bassett (who plays Turner) and Laurence Fishburne (who plays her abusive husband, Ike) and as a potent portrayal of wife beating and the emotions that surround it (in this case, Ike's professional envy and Tina's stoic acceptance of abuse), it's quite a show. Read full review

Love is supple entertainment -- thanks to on-the-money performances by Bassett and Laurence Fishburne as Ike. Read full review

The movie makes us all want to stand up and cheer, “Shine on, Tina. Shine on.” Read full review

Bassett's portrayal of Turner's transformation from wide-eyed teen-ager to subservient star of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue is skillful and absorbing. It doesn't take long to accept Bassett as the ersatz Tina and immerse oneself in the story. On the other hand, Ike Turner (Laurence Fishburne) comes across as such a flawed and unredeemable human being that one is left with a yearning for his version of the Tina Turner saga. [11 Jun 1993]

Overlong and repetitious, the film doesn't live up to the high expectations set by its charming opening scene, but the musical numbers, which often feature the original wigs and trashy Ikettes gear, are handily directed by Brian Gibson of the HBO movie The Josephine Baker Story. The mitigating factor is that Bassett overcomes the limitations of the role to become more than a punching bag. Read full review

What’s Love Got to Do With It? manages to show us a classic rise/fall/comeback tale with a little flair and a lot of heat. Read full review

Since the movie never really gets very far beneath the skin of these immensely talented people, their battles and her final victory seldom rise above the level of moderately entertaining melodrama. [11 Jun 1993, p.3G]

Along with the usual streamlining of history, we get a good deal of first-hand emotion and little critical perspective. Read full review

For all its cleverness and moments of power, What's Love Got to Do With It is missing more than the question mark at the end of the title. [18 Jun 1993, p.18]

With a lot more insight and a lot less hagiography, it could have been a real movie. [18 Jun 1993]