Jersey
Boys
I am always the guy who complains when you compare the movie and the
book, so get ready for a heaping helping of hypocritical from me as I
compare the show and the movie. I should feel much more ashamed.
Based on the true story and the immensely popular Broadway musical,
John Lloyd Young stars as Frankie Valli – a young man with a
talented voice growing up just outside Newark, NJ in the
1950’s. It’s a rough and tumble world where you go
into the military, the mafia or find some way to become famous enough
to get out. Frankie and his buddies want to be famous, and we see the
tumultuous story of how The Four Seasons conquers the music world,
while their group and families fall apart.
Jersey Boys
is heavy stuff with one of the greatest soundtracks you could ever
compile, but director Clint Eastwood seems to be missing the mark just
a little bit. Where’s the energy and excitement?
If you have ever seen Jersey
Boys on stage, it is an
electrifying experience where the cast interacts with the audience, the
music explodes off the stage and the audience is enraptured by the
constantly changing set. Eastwood can’t duplicate that as he
makes a very standard biographical movie, but he is not quite getting
the juice needed to take Jersey Boys the movie from decent to
great.
It’s an emotionally numb movie.
The storytelling is superb. Eastwood is able to show you the complex
menagerie of people who help make The Four Seasons one of the greatest
and most successful bands in the history of music. It’s not
just Frankie’s voice. It’s also Bob
Gaudio’s writing. Producer Bob Crewe’s guiding
hand, motivational methods and recording tactics to help that music
sound so amazing. It’s the people from the neighborhood
looking out for a kid who seems to have something special to make it
out of the neighborhood. It’s even the kind of slimy Tommy
DeVito, who is using everyone’s talent’s to make
his life better, but also doing the underhanded and dirty work that was
kind of necessary to survive and thrive.
Like the show, Eastwood still has the cast kind of telling us the story
and giving us the insight we need to understand what is happening on
stage, but we need more help with the timeline. It’s
virtually impossible to tell what year each event is happening unless
you are a hardcore Frankie Valli fan.
The cast makes Jersey Boys
worthy enough to see. John Lloyd Young excels as the younger Frankie,
but seems to suffer with the weight of the movie as the story grows
more mature and complex. His performance is understated in some good
ways, and he picks moments to capture the right fury, but his
performance becomes as flat as the movie towards the end.
Jersey Boys
could use a little more lightheartedness, but we do get to see the
comical and tragic naiveté of the characters as Eastwood is
smart enough to rely on the songs, which has always been a proven path
to success for The Four Seasons.
Jersey
Boys is rated R for language throughout.
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