Based on the best-selling 2013 novel by Edward Kelsey Moore (adapted by Cee Marcellus, which is actually a pen name for Gina Prince-Bythewood, with revisions by director Tina Mabry), The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat follows the lives of three best friends growing up in Plainview, Indiana, from the late 1960s until the early 2010s. There isn’t a singular storyline that takes us through events. Instead, things simply bounce among the three women and between the two time periods bookending the film.
Uzo Aduba and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor play Clarice and Odette, respectively, who are lifelong friends. The reclusive Barbara Jean (Sanaa Lathan plays her as an adult) is something of a social outcast in high school, but thanks to diner owner Big Earl (Tony Winters) and his wife, she manages to escape an abusive home life and live with Earl’s family, while becoming better friends with the other two girls (Tati Gabrielle plays the young Barbara Jean, while Abigail Achiri and Kyanna Simone play the teen Clarice and Odette). Once the relationships are established, the film takes us through a series of trials and tribulations endured by all three women, from unplanned pregnancy, love affairs, heartbreak, illness, deaths in the family, and even events that challenge the friendship at the center of the movie.
Director Mabry (a Queen Sugar producer, writer, and television director, making her second big-screen film) does an admirable job juggling multiple threads and two timelines in her quest to make what is essentially an epic soap opera into a cinematic celebration of friendship bonds, relationships that are stronger than blood, and challenges that I’m guessing most viewers will be able to identify with. There’s nothing especially shocking going on, but the chemistry among the three leads is highly convincing and always entertaining. Mekhi Phifer, Vondie Curtis-Hall, and Russell Hornsby play the husbands of the three women, each of whom have their own various struggles to contend with, while Julian McMahon plays one of the few white characters in the film, Ray, who as a young man had a serious (and ultimately doomed) crush on Barbara Jean (and vice versa).
The film captures the times and places that serve as the backdrop for this friendship and these events, and while it often feels a bit too generically Midwest, the film manages to find its center in these three friends. With such a large cast and two time periods to contend with, The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat can sometimes feel as if it's spread too thin to give every main character their due, but it gets the job done in most cases, and nearly all of the characters (especially the women) feel as if they exist in three dimensions, instead of as a collection of cliches. It’s a beautiful-looking film, full of color, texture, light, and vibrant performances that almost dare you not to love these characters. It may not always go deep, but it’s substantive and celebratory, even in its darkest moments.
The film is now streaming exclusively on Hulu.
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