Sometimes an all-you-can-eat buffet isn’t as good as one well-prepared course. Such an approach to curating a menu seems to be the dilemma with The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat. This adaptation of the popular novel by Edward Kelsey Moore offers a little bit of everything. But the quick bites of the book’s narrative beats might not prove a satisfying meal for everyone at the table.
The screenplay by Cee Marcellus (The Woman King’s Gina Prince-Bythewood under a pseudonym) and director Tina Mabry heaps the plate best it can. The Supremes is one of those adaptations that careens through plot points of a book. It covers heartache, joy, love, and death while following the friendship of three women over three decades. It is, frankly, a lot to digest.
With a buffet, mind you, a bountiful plate with a scoop of everything inevitably yields some good bites. The good grub largely comes in the trio of performances by the titular Supremes. Played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Odette, Uza Aduba as Clarice, and Sanaa Lathan as Barbara Jean, the Supremes offer heart and humour. There’s some quality comfort food here when the film gets the recipe just right.
However, The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat has a second trio of actors playing the friends. Ingénues Kyanna Simone as Odette, Abigail Achiri as Clarice, and Tati Gabrielle as Barbara Jean admittedly deliver some notable breakthrough turns. But the casting is all off: the two sets of actors look nothing alike.
As the film jumps from steam tray to steam tray and tells how Odette and Clarice befriended Barbara Jean, a girl from the other side of the tracks (literally), and formed a bond at the diner Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, and then jumps forward to observe the enduring friendship in the adult years, The Supremes proves disorienting. It’s hard to form any emotional attachment to characters amid an ongoing game of Guess Who.
The disconnect mutes much of the first and second act as the young and the mature Supremes each encounter life milestones. These acts play like a highlight reel of Black trauma as racial divides shape the community. The Supremes lose loved ones, sometimes under superstitious circumstances and sometimes under suspicious ones. Husbands, boyfriends, children, and mentors all meet varying dire fates. Add some cancer, an affair, alcoholism, and a murder plot that just sort of pops up once or twice, and one can wonder what kept these women going from the story’s span from 1968 to 1999.
It’s the friendship. The film does find some great moments of levity as it basks in the support that these women provide each other. The warm easygoing humour is easy to tuck into, as is the morale of sticking together through tough times.
It helps, too, that both sets of actors have strong chemistry. The actors rise to the challenge of conveying a bond that endures, but becomes complicated, as the characters age. What the actors lack in likeness they offset with synergy.
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor shines in particular as the elder Odette. She’s arguably the rock of the group, the strongest Supreme who inspires her friends to be their best selves. It’s also the most dynamic part as the film begins with Odette, visibly ravaged by illness, sitting beneath a lush tree. As the film weaves through Earl’s funeral, a death that inspires Barbara Jean’s alcoholism, and another violent death that sharpens racial tensions, it seems that death is knocking on Odette’s door—and the Supremes’ milkshake fuelled sessions.
The little cloud of death that hangs atop many scenes serves as a reminder to savour every moment. Inconsistent as the film may be, the bond of friendship remains a coherent through line. These women are good company, and the people one shares a meal with often trump what’s on the plate.
