Etta James really has nothing to gripe about.

Complain (or "joke" as she said in a subsequent backtrack) as the R&B legend might have about Beyonce Knowles's rendition of At Last during Barack Obama's inaugural ball, Mrs. Jay-Z's performance as James in Cadillac Records is the piston-hot goods: all scorching sex appeal and soulfulness.

Fact is, Knowles is so scintillatingly scarred as the demon-addled James that you can't help but wish they'd built the entire movie around her (especially since Knowles is credited as an executive producer).

Instead she's stranded in a scattershot ensemble piece that exceeds its reach in its retelling of the origins of Chicago's Chess label.

As it stands, despite a powerhouse cast -- along with Knowles, standouts include Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters and Eamonn Walker as Howlin' Wolf -- and the expectedly superb sonic landscape, Cadillac Records is a bit of a wreck: gleaming parts but a mess under the hood.

Adrien Brody -- whose Academy Award is rapidly becoming the most squandered since F. Murray Abraham's -- plays Leonard Chess, founder of the seminal Chicago-based record label (with his brother Phil) in 1957.

Chess's roster of blues musicians were as explosively talented as they were vexed by vices: thus even Wright's Waters, saner than most, is a serial philander.

Minor indiscretions compared to, say, Chuck Berry -- a memorable Mos Def -- who winds up jailed for transporting an under-aged girl across state lines.

Time and again, drugs, booze, sex, racism, etc. threaten to unravel spectacular success.

Yet the film struggles to find a groove, jammed with players but hollow at the centre.

At best, it's a semi-coherent drama propelled by the scope of its material; at worst, it's the most egregious pile-up of biopic cliches since Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

Was capturing the machinations behind the birth of rock 'n' roll simply too daunting a challenge for director Darnell Martin?

Seems like it.

Historical pop culture signposts are raced by with such breathlessness that little resonates.

Even Chess's underhandedness feels fleetingly brushed over. Still, while the narrative never coalesces, the film is far from a wash -- the songs alone ratchet up the entertainment quotient.

It's just too bad that what remains is a soundtrack in search of a movie.

(This film is rated 18-A)

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