But I wanna see The Blob!

Jersey Boys

(2014)

Unlike Hudson Hawk, I never did want to sing like Frankie Valli. So maybe the intrinsic appeal of this Clint Eastwood not-musical (I expect he swore of them after Paint Your Wagon), based on the broadway musical, is probably rather lost on me. It isn’t dislikeable as such, but it’s so slight and effort-free and really rather dull. Jersey Boys is so lightweight, it’s in danger of floating off into the firmament at any moment. A film so conscious that it’s diet-Goodfellas in tone and approach, it even overtly references its inspiration. Repeatedly.

Jersey Boys is also fairly poor name for a movie; what works in the realm of musical theatre may not translate to the big screen. Maybe The Four Seasons wouldn’t have cut it either, but the title doesn’t have pulling power. Musicals are hit and miss as cinema properties, of course, but – I don’t know how it went over on stage – you’d barely know this was one. Sure, it’s got the songs (sung impeccably by John Lloyd Young as Valli). Yet the biggest clue to its show origins is the to-camera monologues as various members of the group introduce different passages of the proceedings. Was Clint embarrassed to be doing an all-singing, all-dancing picture? Is that why he left the big number for credit roll?

And, is there sufficient draw here, outside of the (admittedly) memorable tunes? The mob trappings are very loose, and borderline benign (that Goodfellas-lite thing). Christopher Walken essays the most chucklesome made guy you ever did see, and light foots away with many of the biggest laughs (“Hey you – Stay out of my bathroom,” he instructs one of the group, on learning he is prone to pissing in the sink). But the sashaymeister only actually gets to show his moves during the final credits.

The rags-to-riches trajectory is tried-and-tested. As such, this comes across as very familiar, without nearly enough backbone or drama to make it distinct. There are scrapes with the law (but Frankie’s a good kid, see?), the arranging of the various band pieces to make a hit (the arrival of Erich Bergen’s songsmith Bob Gaudio), and the gradual disintegration of the group as Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) becomes mired in debt. Then there are the infidelities (skirted lightly over) and family traumas (the death of Frankie’s daughter – don’t worry, it’s fairly light; everything is light). I found my interest piqued as the group fell apart and Frankie fell into the motions of a made-up backing band, before scoring a hit with the Gaudio-penned Can’t Take My Eyes Off You. But, by then, we’re nearly at the end.

And being nearly at the end means that the latex shuffle is needed. The youthful group members re-join as unconvincingly aged as Leo in J Edgar for their 1990 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So runs the course (barring overdose) of the utterly pedestrian musical biopic. But is there any other way to do them? There have been occasionally inspired snippets of bands’ histories (Backbeat) but even Oliver Stone at his height came unstuck with the verbatim regurgitation of a band in the full throes of psychotropic abandon (The Doors).

The cast are solid. Piazza walks off with the film in the showiest part as the cocky wannabe-hard guy; he’s already had good practice giving attitude as Lucky Luciano in Boardwalk Empire. Lloyd Young is (yes!) light and inconsequential, so fits the material. Bergen looks like both Tate Donovan and the disgraced Commander Decker. Mike Doyle plays up the flamboyance as Bob Crewe, but not so much that he becomes a complete caricature.

Admittedly, the film is peppered with good gags. A character is watching Clint in Rawhide at one point. Joe Pesci (Joey Russo), we discover, was a friend of Tommy (and after being bought out, Tommy went to work for Pesci), and was responsible for bringing them together with Gaudio. Pesci, inevitably, utters his most celebrated line “Funny how?” (no, not “They fuck you at the drive-through”) The taciturn Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) finally goes into full meltdown mode over the 10 years he had to put up with Tommy, but the focus of his rage is his untidiness and poor hygiene (rather than squandering half a million he didn’t have).

Clint’s career probably looked on its last tired old legs. Jon Favreau was originally attached, and this seems exactly the sort of journeyman “What shall I stumble into next?” fare you’d expect from him. Clint has become that guy also, crashing from project to project like a wind-up toy, his Zimmer frame barely leaving any impression, so forgettable are the results. Then he made American Sniper and suddenly there’s patriotic zeal in abundance and queues round the block. He should have remade Kelly’s Heroes. There’s some wit in Jersey Boys, then, but it’s caught between two stools. It wants to come from the mean streets and yet indulge the musical chicanery of West Side Story. It probably worked better on stage.

Comments

There are times when I miss the darkness. It is hard to live always in the light.

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

I had that Christopher Marlowe in my boat once.

Shakespeare in Love (1998)
(SPOILERS) You see? Sometimes Oscar can get it right. Not that the backlash post-announcement would have you crediting any such. No, Saving Private Ryan had the rug unscrupulously pulled from under it by Harvey Weinstein essentially buying Shakespeare in Love’s Best Picture through a lavish promotional campaign. So unfair! It is, of course, nothing of the sort. If the rest of Private Ryan were of the same quality as its opening sequence, the Spielberg camp might have had a reasonable beef, but Shakespeare in Love was simply in another league, quality wise, first and foremost thanks to a screenplay that sang like no other in recent memory. And secondly thanks to Gwyneth Paltrow, so good and pure, before she showered us with goop.

Move away from the jams.

Aladdin (2019)
(SPOILERS) I was never overly enamoured by the early ‘90s renaissance of Disney animation, so the raves over Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin left me fairly unphased. On the plus side, that means I came to this live action version fairly fresh (prince); not quite a whole new world but sufficiently unversed in the legend to appreciate it as its own thing. And for the most part, Aladdin can be considered a moderate success. There may not be a whole lot of competition for that crown (I’d give the prize to Pete’s Dragon, except that it was always part-live action), but this one sits fairly comfortably in the lead.

What you do is very baller. You're very anarchist.

Lady Bird (2017)
(SPOILERS) You can see the Noah Baumbach influence on Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut, with whom she collaborated on Frances Ha; an intimate, lo-fi, post-Woody Allen (as in, post-feted, respected Woody Allen) dramedy canvas that has traditionally been the New Yorker’s milieu. But as an adopted, spiritual New Yorker, I suspect Gerwig honourably qualifies, even as Lady Bird is a love letter/ nostalgia trip to her home city of Sacramento.

The Statue of Liberty is kaput.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)
(SPOILERS) William Goldman said of Saving Private Ryan, referencing the film’s titular objective in Which Lie Did I Tell? that it “becomes, once he is found, a disgrace”. “Hollywood horseshit” he emphasised, lest you were in doubt as to his feelings. While I had my misgivings about the picture on first viewing, I was mostly, as many were, impacted by its visceral prowess (which is really what it is, brandishing it like only a director who’s just seen Starship Troopers but took away none of its intent could). So I thought, yeah Goldman’s onto something here, if possibly slightly exaggerating for effect. But no, he’s actually spot-on. If Saving Private Ryan had been a twenty-minute short, it would rightly muster all due praise for its war-porn aesthetic, but unfortunately there’s a phoney, sentimental, hokey tale attached to that opening, replete with clichéd characters, horribly earnest, honorific music and “exciting!” action to engage your interest. There are…

Why would I turn into a filing cabinet?

Captain Marvel (2019)
(SPOILERS) All superhero movies are formulaic to a greater or lesser degree. Mostly greater. The key to an actually great one – or just a pretty good one – is making that a virtue, rather than something you’re conscious of limiting the whole exercise. The irony of the last two stand-alone MCU pictures is that, while attempting to bring somewhat down-the-line progressive cachet to the series, they’ve delivered rather pedestrian results. Of course, that didn’t dim Black Panther’s cultural cachet (and what do I know, swathes of people also profess to loving it), and Captain Marvel has hit half a billion in its first few days – it seems that, unless you’re poor unloved Ant-Man, an easy $1bn is the new $700m for the MCU – but neither’s protagonist really made that all-important iconic impact.

I’m the spoiled toff who lives in the manor.

Robin Hood (2018)
(SPOILERS) Good grief. I took the disdain that greeted Otto Bathurst’s big screen debut with a pinch of salt, on the basis that Guy Ritchie’s similarly-inclined lads-in-duds retelling of King Arthur was also lambasted, and that one turned out to be pretty good fun for the most part. But a passing resemblance is as close as these two would-be franchises get (that, and both singularly failed to start their respective franchises). Robin Hood could, but it definitely didn’t.

I should have mailed it to the Marx Brothers.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
When your hero(es) ride off into the sunset at the end of a film, it’s usually a pretty clear indication that a line is being drawn under their adventures. Sure, rumours surfaced during the ‘90s of various prospective screenplays for a fourth outing for the whip-cracking archeologist. But I’m dubious anyone really expected it to happen. There seemed to be a natural finality to Last Crusade that made the announcement of his 2007 return nostalgically welcome but otherwise unwarranted. That it turned out so tepid merely seemed like confirmation of what we already knew; Indy’s time was past.

It’s the Mount Everest of haunted houses.

The Legend of Hell House (1973)
(SPOILERS) In retrospect, 1973 looks like a banner year for the changing face of the horror movie. The writing was on the wall for Hammer, which had ruled the roost in Britain for so long, and in the US the release of The Exorcist completed a transformation of the genre that had begun with Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby; the realistic horror film, where the terror was to be found in the everyday (the home, the family). Then there was Don’t Look Now, which refracted horror tropes through a typically Nic Roeg eye, fracturing time and vision in a meditative exploration of death and grief. The Wicker Man, meanwhile, would gather its reputation over the passing years. It stands as a kind of anti-horror movie, eschewing standard scares and shock tactics for a dawning realisation of the starkness of opposing belief systems and the fragility of faith.

In comparison to this trio, The Legend of Hell House is something of a throwback; its slightly stagey tone, and cobweb…

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog