Little Richard: I Am Everything review – Muddled sexuality and cultural impact of a rock and roll icon explored

Selected cinemas; Cert 15(UK)

Little Richard in 1958, the year he stopped recording. Photo: Neil Hunter via BBC — © Pictorial Press Ltd

Hilary White

Thunderous 12-bar blues cut with primal yelps made Little Richard a key building block of rock and roll. This documentary portrait doubles down on the idea, painting Richard Wayne Penniman as no less than “the big bang”.

It was a claim often made by the man himself (who died in 2020), as white acts like Elvis, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, to name a few, donned his sound and surged past him.

Lisa Cortes’s film, however, also charts Penniman’s muddled sexuality. After quitting showbiz (for a second time) to become a preacher in the 1970s, we see him staunchly denounce his homosexuality, only to re-emerge more proudly for a sorely deserved career lap of honour. Here, scholars argue that rock wouldn’t exist without this one man’s intimate ties with queer and trans identity.

Mick Jagger, John Waters and Nile Rodgers all pay tribute. Oddly, a 90-min BBC doc (King and Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll) that aired last week featured Rodgers too, as well as Jagger’s bandmate Keith Richards and much of the exact same footage seen here. Free of this film’s schmaltzy, Moonage Daydream-like cosmic CGI, it is certainly the better of the two.

Three stars