Stream It or Skip It: ‘The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat’ on Hulu, an All-Star Adaptation of the Best-Selling Book

Based on the 2013 novel by Edward Kelsey Moore, The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat jumps back and forth in time to chronicle the ups and (mostly) downs of three closely bonded Black women, over the course of multiple decades. In their older years, they’re played by a trio of terrific actresses – but are their abilities enough to overcome a script that feels so much like a novel condensed into an episodic couple of hours?

THE SUPREMES AT EARL’S ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: To be clear upfront, this is not a biopic about a forgotten time that the world-famous girl group featuring Diana Ross played an unexpected diner gig. The Supremes is a nickname given to Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean as fresh-faced young women navigating racism and other social problems in the late 1960s, and which sticks with them through the years as they suffer a variety of setbacks, heartbreaks, and occasional moments of joy (though the movie feels conspicuously short on the latter). As middle-aged adults in the 1990s, Odette (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), Barbara Jean (Sanaa Lathan), and Clarice (Uzo Aduba) confront illness, infidelity, alcoholism, family history, and sometimes even each other, while continuing to reunite at the same table at the titular restaurant, whose owner becomes a father figure to them – at least before his demise kicks off a series of tragic demises that the movie is built around. characters confront so much hardship in both timelines, in fact, that the movie starts to resemble a parade of miseries that can be visited upon women of color at any age.

What Will It Remind You Of?: The presence of Sanaa Lathan and frequent references to a long history of friendship might have some reviewers recalling the generally lighter melodrama of the Best Man movies. There’s also a slight element of The Big Chill, and ensemble family dramas like Soul Food. (Is it a coincidence that both The Best Man and Soul Food later became TV shows? Read on for how this connects to The Supremes.)

Performance Worth Watching: Sanaa Lathan hasn’t been seen in movies enough lately, and while all three leads do their best, her mix of soapy melodrama and rueful humor gets closer to a workable tone than anyone else. 

Memorable Dialogue: I spent way too much time trying to figure out if the expression “keep it” would be an anachronism in the late 1990s. 

Sex and Skin: With three different women in three different romantic relationships, there’s plenty of sex – but with the movie’s middle-aged sensibilities, not much skin, as the sex scenes are sometimes laughably similar to each other (get ready for lots of mostly-clothed missionary!). 

Our Take: The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat has a lot going for it, with Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Sanaa Lathan, Uzo Aduba sharing the spotlight as long-time friends facing the trials and tribulations of, well, living. Maybe the broadness of that assignment indicates that the movie actually has too much going for it; The Supremes very much bears the signs of an eventful 400-page novel being forced uncomfortably into a two-hour timeframe. Lord knows we don’t need any more stretched-out limited series, but Tina Mabry’s film may nonetheless have been better off as one, allotting more time for the actresses playing these parts to dig further into their roles and explore facets of their personalities that aren’t purely reactions to tragedy. The movie seems like it’s supposed to ruminate, at least partially, on the passage of time, and how relationships can both deteriorate and strengthen with age and adversity. But with so little middle material – the vast majority of the story takes place either when the friends are around 20, or when they’re in their 50s (which, incidentally, asks the audience to ignore that Aduba is a full decade younger than either of her costars) – the story feels weirdly centerless, a series of before-and-after photos that never dramatizes anything in between. To hurry along the drama, multiple characters are killed off before we’re allowed to really get to know them. It’s obviously tragic and horrific when one character loses a child – but as depicted here, it’s also undeniably rushed in a way that makes the poor kid feel like a prop.

What The Supremes essentially turns into, then, is a series of confrontations and funerals; it’s got so much incident to pile up that one character actually has to die at another one’s funeral. Ellis-Taylor, Aduba, and Lathan are all more than capable of playing these characters, and show glimmers of what they could have done with more detailed writing. But ultimately they barely have a chance, with so much happening off-screen. There’s no breathing room here, or much time for specific insight into how these characters move through the world on a day-to-day basis. It’s all long-building crises and emotional climaxes. For all of the references to racism and other social ills, the problems often feel weirdly compartmentalized; the outside world barely feels like it exists at all. Instead, it’s just a faint backdrop for the relentless monotony of this movie’s drama. 

Our Call: The many fans of any of these actresses may want to check out The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, and it’s watchable enough. But unless you’ve got a high tolerance for melodramatic misery, it’s probably safe to SKIP IT. It’s a major disappointment.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.

The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat