‘The New Edition Story’: A Music Biography Done Right

Ken Tucker
·Critic-at-Large, Yahoo Entertainment


There have been scores of TV movies tracing the rise (and usually fall) of pop groups, most of them trite, a few of them exciting. While I know the return on investment in watching any one of these is low, I’m still a sucker for showbiz sagas like this. (My all-time fave: Dead Man’s Curve, made in 1978 about the beach-music duo Jan and Dean, played by Bruce Davison and a pre-Battlestar Galactica Richard Hatch.) So when it came to The New Edition Story, a three-night “event” movie on BET starting Tuesday, I came to the project with high hopes and low expectations.

My devotion to the genre was rewarded: The New Edition Story is an exceptionally well-made, fast-paced, warts-and-all biopic. It follows the usual narrative path — hardscrabble kids hustling to make it big, achieving stardom only to have the group riven with infighting and ego. But that narrative is a strong backbone, one that supports first-rate performances, and the cast does a notably fine job of re-creating the music of these young men, who gave us such prime pop-R&B as “Candy Girl,” “Popcorn Love,” and “Mr. Telephone Man.”

Related: The New Edition Story EP on Why the Group Wanted to Share Its History, Warts and All

As written by Abdul Williams and directed by Chris Robinson, The New Edition Story picks up the story at its roots, in the Roxbury section of Boston, where Bobby Brown, Michael Bivens, and Ricky Bell form a vocal group that expands into a quintet in the wake of the Jackson 5’s massive success. Taken in by a manager played by Wood Harris (who wouldn’t want The Wire’s Avon Barksdale as their manager?) and guided to stardom by producer Maurice Starr (a wonderfully world-weary Faizon Love), each member is played by at least two actors as they grow from kids to adult; every one of them is excellent, which is no small feat.

The details are frequently quite witty, such as the re-creation of a late-’70s show at Manhattan’s Roseland theater, in which New Edition was top-billed over Madonna and Kurtis Blow. Proto-rapper Blow, auteur of “The Breaks” and played by Melvin Jackson Jr., takes one look at the young-teen New Edition in their uniform suits and bow ties and says dismissively, “What are y’all? Nation of Islam?”

We know how the story ends: Bobby Brown leaves/is kicked out (the movie manages to give equal weight to both theories), three members leave to form Bell Biv DeVoe (remember the new jack swing of “Poison”?), and there are various episodes of bad behavior and worse. But The New Edition Story remains vibrant and clever. It takes a group that is arguably underrated and gives it a glowing showcase.

The New Edition Story airs Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 9 p.m. on BET.