The High Note Sings a Catchy, Heartfelt Tune

Movies about making music, or any art form, often find themselves in a tricky arrangement, particularly when focusing on a highly technical aspect like music production. Director Nisha Ganatra and screenwriter Flora Greeson’s The High Note raises the stakes by featuring both an aspiring producer and a world-famous pop star, and overall the film maintains an entertaining and thoughtful pitch while exploring love, ambition, and the importance of a good drum fill in the music industry.

Dakota Johnson and Tracee Ellis Ross in The High Note. Glen Wilson/Focus Features

Maggie (Dakota Johnson) is the personal assistant for Grace Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross), one of the most iconic pop stars in the world. Her duties include picking Grace up from her personal jet, handing Grace smoothies, accompanying Grace on tour and reminding her what city they’re in, and helping Grace clear out the “early evening gowns” section of her closet. Her duties do not include offering opinions on Grace’s music career or producing Grace’s music, which is her true aspiration.

Grace herself is a middle-aged singer who hasn’t put out original music in 10 years. She clearly hasn’t lost any of her skill or zest for performing, but her most recent album is a “greatest live hits” record—on the heels of a “greatest hits” album, which was on the heels of a “live” album. She’s tentatively interested in making new music but nervous about her prospects as a black woman in her 40s, and her longtime manager, Jack (Ice Cube), is urging her to play it safe and secure a performing residency in Las Vegas.

Enter David (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). Glen Wilson/Focus Features

In between smoothie runs, Maggie meets David (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a musician she bonds with over flirty conversations about music trivia. In a mistake you can see (or hear) coming from miles away, Maggie implies that she’s a full-time professional producer with connections rather than a moonlighting personal assistant and begins working with him professionally. Her double life soon proves exhausting and complicated, especially as she grows closer to both David and Grace.

Unsurprisingly, Tracee Ellis Ross’s performance is the standout of the movie, imbuing every moment she’s onscreen with dynamism and depth. Surprisingly, however, the movie doesn’t give her more than about a third of the screen time, holding focus instead on Maggie’s struggle to balance her official job with her dreams of producing. It’s a reasonable structure, but Ross so brilliantly embodies both the charisma and the guardedness of an extremely talented and wealthy superstar that she’s inevitably the most interesting part of the movie.

Grace Davis onstage. Glen Wilson/Focus Features

The High Note infuses an impressive amount of nuance into Grace’s relationships with the people around her, specifically Maggie and Jack. Maggie may feel creatively unfulfilled, but it’s clear that Grace genuinely enjoys her company and deep down values her role in her life. Grace’s camaraderie and warm banter with Jack easily establish their long history and keep us invested in a character whose goals are frequently at odds with our two heroines. Though he sometimes disagrees with Grace and often clashes with Maggie, Jack’s no villain. His protectiveness and affection for Grace is always evident, and his insight about the music industry is usually correct.

Dakota Johnson’s performance is effective and enjoyable, though not particularly well served by a plot that relies so heavily on the predictable “lie that will clearly blow up in her face” beats. Similarly, Kelvin Harrison Jr. is charming as David, and his chemistry with Johnson is very fun to watch, but the plot machinations don’t leave much room for the deepening of that chemistry. The tertiary characters are a delight, from Zoë Chao as Maggie’s encouraging roommate and June Diane Raphael as Grace’s boozy “house manager” to one-off appearances by Diplo, Eddie Izzard, and Marc Evan Jackson. Bill Pullman even shows up as Maggie’s dad to share some perspective.

Glen Wilson/Feature Films

The High Note and Nisha Ganatra’s most recent feature, Late Night (written by Mindy Kaling and starring Kaling and Emma Thompson), focus on a similar dynamic. Both spotlight two women, one a newcomer to her field (comedy in the case of Late Night) and the other an older, more established performer. The two movies have similar strengths and weaknesses—magnetic performances from the older stars, but an overreliance on predictable plot beats that cloud the substantial questions about ambition and creativity the characters are working through.

That being said, it’s nice to watch a movie about women in a traditionally male-dominated field that sincerely addresses the characters’ gendered and racialized experiences and is genuinely fun rather than unendingly grim. All in all, The High Note is chock-full of sweet moments, compelling characters, and catchy tunes and is an undeniable joy to watch.