Natalie Cole speaks to camera in between dramatisation of her life as the daughter of crooner Nat King Cole, with Diahann Carroll playing her strict, prim mother whose emotional distance and initial disapproval of her daughter's singing career strains their relationship. Townsend's telemovie doesn't shy from the drug use, but in order to cover around forty years (the movie takes us to around 1991) in two hours, it's necessary to cut a few corners and compress material, which keeps the pace constant.
The biopic tracks Cole's life throughout her years, including her time at college on the fringes of the Black Power movement where her singing abilities are initially discovered by the band 'Black Magic' (although Natalie reminisces that she doesn't remember a lot of the gigs she played during that time due to frequent LSD use). As her career blossoms, so too does her dependency on heroin grow more debilitating, threatening to derail her early career success until the Lord sends her pastor (and later husband) Marvin Yance to save her soul from oblivion.
From the 80s onward, Cole plays herself including the moment she apparently inadvertently discovers the potential to duet with her now long dead father in a career defining move that would ultimately prove a master stroke.
There's plenty of sampling of her hit songs (although 1989's 'Miss You Like Crazy' isn't one of them) and if you were ever curious about her life as the daughter of the great NKC, or her own Grammy award-winning career, then this superficial treatment might whet your appetite to read her autobiography ('Angel on My Shoulder') from which this preview is adapted.
