Genre: Comedy/Drama/Musical
Director: Craig Brewer
Writer: Chad Taylor
Cast: Christian Bale, Stephan James, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Alicia Keys, Kenan Thompson, Malcolm Barrett, Logan Browning
Plot: Music producer Frank Farian (Christian Bale) watches his television set intensely, even though it is simply showing a toothpaste commercial. After the commercial, music variety show Soul Train resumes and the quartet Boney M. performs. Their lead singer, Maya (Alicia Keys), has an energy that draws the attention of the camera but the group’s performance as a whole is flat. At his home, Farian looks displeased. He picks up a phone and, upon someone answering, is emphatic in his first words: “DISCO. IS. DEAD.”
Days later, Frank meets with Maya in his office. He tells her that the band just isn’t connecting without their former frontman, who recently left the band. Maya takes offence to this as a slight to her but he assures her that it is not. He leaves his desk and puts his hands on her shoulders but she pushes them away and asks if this means the group is done. He says that they could try her as a solo artist but she says no, in solidarity with her group-mates.
Frank finds himself frustrated with his place in the music business. It is the mid-80s and music is getting taken over by videos and television. His back is against the wall and he needs a way to survive. He listens to a number of tapes sent to his music label for potential new artists.There is a lot of sameness in the various tapes until he gets to one that catches his ear. It is a male duo whose voices work well in harmony and seem distinctly attuned to this era of pop music. He calls Maya and has her listen, and she confirms that they have something. He lounges back in his chair with money signs practically in his eyes.
There is a hard cut to Frank sitting in front of the two singers at his desk: Val (Kenan Thompson) and Marcus (Malcolm Barrett). The money signs are all but gone from Frank’s eyes. In an age where image is key, these two are less-than-ideal options to be music video stars. Two slightly overweight men in their forties is not what MTV is looking for. However, he doesn’t tell them this to their face and instead lies and says that he is unfortunately signing someone else. He shakes their hands and thanks them for their time, much to their disappointment.
Frank has dinner with Maya. It is clear that they may have had a thing in the past but they’re currently in the “off-again” phase. Maya asks how much he signed that duo for and Frank tells her that he couldn’t sign them. She is shocked and he shows her a picture of them, to back up his decision. She chides him still, saying that their voices are what should matter most in the music industry. He disagrees, saying this is the image business. Still wanting to stick up for them, she asks why doesn’t he just do like he did with her group. Frank’s eyes widen. Before she can even finish talking, he says they could hire models to lip sync the songs. Why spend an infinite number of hours trying to solve the impossible task of finding a good looking person who can sing and dance when you could just manufacture it? Maya is a little taken aback, going farther than she expected but she can tell Frank is fully committed. He says that he will call Val and Marcus back and let them know.
Frank sits in office and watches hours of music videos and fingers through piles of magazines, taking notes on the looks of the top stars. Val and Marcus visit his office and he proposes to them the deal. They will sing on the tracks and get a good cut of the profits but someone else will be the avatars of the group. They are hesitant to accept but realize that it is still a big opportunity so they accept. Next comes the casting phase as Frank, Maya, Val, and Marcus scout potential models for the roles of the frontmen. The first is obvious: Fab Morvan (Stephan James), a back-up dancer with striking good looks, long hair and the dance skills to put on a show. Upon hearing of the project, Fab suggests that he has a friend who he thinks would make for a good duo. He brings in Rob Pilatus (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and the panel is blown away by seeing the pair together. They all agree that this is it.
Marcus says that when he was on vacation in Turkey, he saw an advertising slogan that seemed like a band name to him: Milli….Vanilli. After a beat, everyone in the room laughs. Frank then conceits that it is kind of catchy and so it sticks. Milli Vanilli is now a thing.
The plan becomes clear: write a few catchy songs, have Val and Marcus sing them, and then make music videos and promote with Rob and Fab. This is not as easy as it looks, especially the first part. As the trial and error rolls on, Fab and Maya grow close and flirtatious as he pursues her. She initially tells him that they can’t let this go to far. He thinks that she is alluding to her weird relationship with Frank but she says it is more about the age gap between them. Fab laughs this off and says that she can’t deny the chemistry between them, she knows it’s true. While she neither can confirm nor deny this, she says that sounds like a song. “Girl you know it’s true...ooo ooo ooo, I love you”. Fab agrees and they write it down and rush to the studio.
Frank likes the song and has Val and Marcus sing it. After a few tries, they get a good master recording. They send it out to various radio stations and it gains traction. This moves them onto the next stage. They shoot a music video on a lower budget and follow it up with promotional shots of Rob and Fab. ‘Girl You Know It’s True’ catches on like wildfire, both on the radio but especially on TV. As Frank had predicted, the looks of Rob and Fab is key to the group becoming successful.
Frank and crew scramble to capitalize on this sudden success. They record enough songs to make an album and more videos. Rob and Fab go on a promotional tour. Despite their broken English (given that they are both German), they do decently with the questions due to Frank’s pre-written lines beforehand. As burgeoning pop stars, the duo is swarmed with passionate fans pining for their attention and affection. Fab playfully takes this all in while Rob is more reserved and denies any attention from the female fans. Maya notices Fab’s behavior on the trail and realizes that she does find herself a bit jealous. She admits this to Fab, who tells her he knew she knew it was true. Maya advises him to loosen up a bit and be himself instead of merely Frank’s puppet. They finally kiss but she still insists they keep this on the down-low.
Frank realizes that the next step to cashing in on this success is setting up a world tour. This is obviously tricky as Rob and Fab aren’t really singing. However, while looking upon the group’s fans, he realizes that they don’t really care about the singing. As long as they go up on stage as themselves, dancing and looking good then the crowd will leave happy. They can pipe in music that they’ll lip-sync to and it should work like a charm. Surprisingly, it does. The first night is a little shaky as Fab forgets a line but Rob covers for him and the show is a huge success (as are the succeeding nights on the tour).
While on tour, they get the call from Frank that they have been nominated for Best New Artist at the Grammys, the most prestigious awards show in music. At the Grammys, Frank, Rob, and Fab take in all the glitz and glamour of the night. In what will be the biggest night of their career, they win the award and accept it on stage. At home, Marcus and Van watch on - beginning to feel a little jaded that they are not the ones up there.
With this award, Frank becomes even more aggressive in promoting the band. Recording more songs and booking more dates is the name of the game, to the exhaustion of the crew. Everyone is starting to grow more frustrated with him. Fab vents about it to Maya, who opens up more about how she knows Frank. In the early 70s, he was a singer himself (in addition to being a songwriter). However, he was always shy to the public eye and so he recruited his back-up singers to be the public image of his band while he pulled the strings behind the scenes. She was one of those singers. Fab asks if they ever got close and she says occasionally but nothing serious. Frank was always focused on his career. He asks about what happened to her group and she says the music style fell out of favor, as did the group with Frank.
Frank books them a live performance on an MTV spring break special with other top acts. They meet MTV VJ “Downtown” Julie Brown (Logan Browning), who tells them they might be the hottest act out there today. During their performance of ‘Girl You Know It’s True’, the unthinkable happens: the backing track begins to skip during Fab’s vocals and repeat the same line over and over. The duo panic and rush off of the stage. Brown tracks them down and says that they’re live on TV and they need to get back out there. They are flushed with embarrassment and terror but she tells them she doesn’t really care. When the music rebounds and is corrected, they decide to go back out there to finish the song. They get a huge roar, implying that the crowd did not even notice.
While the live crowd did not seem to care, all hell starts to break loose at Frank’s office. He begins yielding calls from MTV executives, who are yielding calls from confused and outraged viewers. They become the target of immense media scrutiny as the validity of the group is under examination. Amidst this, album sales start to drop and bookings are canceled, even though Frank is adamant that all is as it seems. This is the final straw for Marcus and Val, who do an interview with an evening news program and reveal that they are the real singers for MillI Vanilli. Frank scrambles and offers to pay them a large sum of money to retract their statements.
But at this point, the floodgates open beyond Frank’s control. Rob & Fab go into public exile as the tabloids hone in on them. With the main duo off limits, the paparazzi start to target their families and Maya, which frustrates them. This gets Rob to come out and make a public statement that they indeed did not sing on their first album but they plan to make it right and release a real album in the future. Lawsuits start to come in by fans who say they were victims of fraud. By this point, the damage is done and, in a devastating blow, the Grammys announce that they are rescinding their award.
Both Milli Vanilli and Frank are released from their contracts at the record label and their top-selling album is shockingly taken out of print. Rob and Fab begin to work independently on an album while Marcus and Val do the same, under the name “The Real Milli Vanilli”. Neither were all that successful, Maya tells Julie Brown as she is interviewed for MTV’s Behind the Music a few years later. When Julie asks about Frank, Maya simply says “Oh, you know Frank…”
We see Frank moving on to his next project, which is not all that different from his previous ones - just with whatever the newest music style is.
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