WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? (Directed by Brian Gibson. Starring Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne)

Or Tina Turner: A Life In Wigs. The first problem of rock biopics is the lookalike factor. Tina Turner is so sheerly familiar, from posters, record sleeves, music videos and movie appearances that any actress playing her is going to look like an impostor. Angela Bassett has the moves, the costumes and the wigs (in this compressed life, Tina appears to change her hairstyle the way most people would change their underwear) but do we ever believe for a moment that this is really Tina?

The problem is compounded by the soundalike factor. Tina Turner has built her career on an extremely distinctive voice. Angel Bassett has a soft-speaking voice. So she doesn't look exactly like Tina, she doesn't sound exactly like Tina, but when she gets up onstage and opens her mouth . . . there it is! Tina's voice, all over the soundtrack. Despite Bassett's valiant attempts to get under Tina's skin, there is always going to be this sense of artifice, as if we were watching a big production of Stars In Their Eyes.

Larry Fishburne does not have the same problem with his portrayal of Ike, chiefly because nobody really knows what Ike looks like. He was always hanging around at the back of the stage, rendered invisible by Tina's dazzling charisma. Any black man with a goatee beard would do, but Fishburne does better than most. With a mercurial mix of seductive charm, pathetic dependency and volatile sadism he makes Ike a tangible force, so that we can begin to understand the hold he had over the woman he discovered, married, turned into a star and terrorised for almost twenty years of a violent destructive relationship. He's a nasty piece of work all right, but even as the movie attempts to condemn him, Fishburne's stunning portrayal gives Ike back his place at the centre of Tina Turner's story. Mind you, he has even more trouble with wigs than Tina.

Which brings me to the second problem of rock biopics: the condensation of time. Of course, all manner of filmed biographies suffer from the essential difficulty of fitting a life into a couple of hours but rock musician's fickle relationship with fashion renders the process comical. Every couple of scenes, we've moved on another year and the stars have changed their whole wardrobe.

Ike and Tina lived through a particularly bad era for this. It all starts off well enough, with the cool, simple fashions of the late '50s and early '60s but, the more successful they become the worse their wardrobes get, the excesses of the late '60s and '70s not wearing at all well. Angela Bassett has to parade around in a series of absurd outfits, ranging from Peter Pan tatters to Las Vegas tassels, aspiring to eroticism but with all the retrospective appeal of the bargain bin in an Ann Summer's shop.

Ike, however, is the one who really suffers, his downward career spiral matched with a series of unintentionally hilarious costume changes, that takes in Beatle wigs, afros, a variety of beards and what appear to be pixie costume with wing collars you could hang-glide from. The inevitable conclusion has to be that Ike may have been cruel to Tina, but his clothes designer was even worse to him. You almost feel pity for the guy.

Hey, I think I feel a song coming on! How about 'Lapel Deep, Platforms High'? The third problem of rock biopics is the music. In a musical, the song and dance numbers develop character and advance the plot. In a rock biopic everything has to stop so that the central character can do what they're famous for and deliver some of their hits. The temptation to try and make the songs a running commentary on the action is difficult to resist by the results are usually more than a little contrived, with Tina singing 'Tina's Wish' with its "I wanna be made over" chorus in her first band rehearsal, or staggering onstage after a beating to sing 'A Fool In Love'.

Which demonstrates the paucity of imagination on display here. English director Brian Gibson brings little flair to the film, simply slipping in a number every few scenes and rocketing through Tina's turbulent life. In the shocking relationship between Tina and Ike, however, he does have some heavy duty material, and in Bassett and Fishburne he has a couple of America's finest actors giving it all they've got. Their energy, combined with the sheer exhilaration of much of the music, gives the film a kind of life of its own, almost amounting to something more than the source material.

The picture it paints is not pretty, of a woman who is a lioness onstage and a doormat at home. We get some insight into what made her that way and are rooting for her escape, but when it comes it is all too glibly dealt with. Tina discovers Buddhism (which in the movie amounts to little more than chanting 'nam yo ho ring kay ko' and burning joss-sticks) and appears to simply chant her way out of the relationship, pausing only for one last fierce, brutal and somehow hilarious fight in the back of a chauffeur-driven limousine on the way to a hotel.

For the discerning music fan, however, this celebration of Tina's triumph will seem a little hollow. She may have escaped a dysfunctional relationship, but at least with Ike she was making some meaty music. By the end she has turned into a bizarre caricature of a rock chick, wearing outlandish blonde wigs and skimpy Las Vegas costumes, and singing the AOR pap that has put her back in the pop charts.

Which leads us to the main problem with rock biopics. Why make them at all? This is not The Doors, where the film had an energy that matched its subject, and the story had a mythic grandeur that illustrated its times. This is a straightforward film about a singer who survived a dysfunctional relationship to turn into a glorified cabaret artist.

You have seen her on Top of the Pops. You may have seen her in concert. You have probably seen her on breakfast television. Well, now you can see her on the big screen too. Simply the usual.