There are the complicated relationships with his dad , his wife, mistress/business partner, other music-biz honchos and the musicians he has to woo and coddle to get what he wants. The most intriguing of these is the thorny tension he had with Gene Simmons of Kiss , an equally ambitious man with an outsized sense of self-importance who shared Bogart's up-from-struggle roots. They have a game-recognizes-game, we-see-each-other relationship that could make for a movie on its own.
And, in order to try and give it all some sense of cohesion, there's a lot of voiceover narration as well as Bogart speaking to the camera. But this can't spackle over the film's problems. Jason Derulo is good as Ronald Isley, Wiz Khalifa does his best as George Clinton and there's a sweet scene with Bogart and Gladys Knight working on"Midnight Train to Georgia" but others don't fare as well. Sebastian Maniscalco as pioneering producer Giorgio Moroder feels like a caricature and the performers chosen to play Summer and, especially, Withers don't look anything like the people they are portraying.
For all of the nostalgic music, bad hairstyles and coke snorting,"Spinning Gold" ultimately fails to capture the freewheeling, pre-AIDS extravagance and excesses of the ’70s music industry. Anyone who comes to"Spinning Gold" looking for"Boogie Nights" but with Donna Summer songs is in for a major disappointment.
If you want to celebrate Bogart's raucous career, you're better off staying home and cranking"Kiss Alive."