I remember a PBS broadcast on minstrels and how by the time white performers in blackface cashed in, black performers could not appear as themselves to work. They had to don the caricature of white performers by putting on outrageous blackface on their black face. I know there's a correlation there somewhere in this weirdness of a movie 
It just feels like a minstrel show, with Saldana looking more like a CGI creation of a black woman, let alone Ms. Simone.
The filmmaker took away all that compelled Ms. Simone as if it doesn't matter. I think Ms. Simone's boldness and Africoid features molded to Saldana's face is less confrontational and will be more acceptable to white audiences. Do we turn the other cheek or do we lash back as in the Martin vs Malcolm debate? Ms. Simone lashed back with her music. If she had just set out to be the first black female classical pianist there would not be much controversy. But given her insistence on That Blackness and what she went through in life, I hope this movie flops big time.
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