ViewGuide

Created Jul 03, 2014 08:45PM PST • Edited Nov 26, 2015 11:50AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   This long movie is no longer than the smash stage show it brings to the Silver Screen. It just feels like it. Clint Eastwood apparently couldn’t come up with a way to transform the show for the screen, with middling results. I can’t think of a way either, but that doesn’t change the underwhelming end-product.

   One change from show musical to screen musical is that the book now dominates the music: feels like more exposition, less singing. Not that each Four Seasons song doesn’t get its due, just that it’s damn near 20 minutes before Sherry lights up the sound system. Then the songs feel kinda few and far between, making Jersey Boys a musical that feels starved for music. Put it this way, it inspires no dancing in the aisles.

   That doesn’t mean it’s not a damn fine movie however. Clint directs no less. The man knows how to make a picture, Jersey Boys being a sepia colored lens into 1950s Joisey and a vivid look at 1960s pop stardom.

   Then it reaches the 70s, a decade when I pretty much hated Frankie Valli. His comeback hits were too AM, too earnest, too cloying. More recently, I loved Jersey Boys the show, like the rest of America. London too.

   However I don’t love the cinematic Jersey Boys, though I’m damn glad I saw it. The movie is at once too much – too earnest to be consistently engaging, too stagy to jump offscreen – yet not enough.

   IOW, it’s got a good beat, but you can’t dance to it.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   One Take Clint characteristically cast some of the original Broadway stars for his movie. Of course he did. The man doesn’t have a phony bone in his body, notwithstanding that his whole career is based on make-believe. He clearly values craft, which John Lloyd Young and Erica Piccininni have in spades. He did cast one moviestar for a star turn as the local crime boss. Christopher Walken is ideal, natch.

   The Four Seasons

   • Vincent Piazza gives Tommy DeVito the necessary swagger, even if he never fully fills the screen.
   • John Lloyd Young originated the Broadway Frankie Valli in Jersey Boys, winning the Tony for Lead Actor in a Musical, along with literally every other major Broadway award a leading man can win. So he nails the role, albeit his career is also fated to remain primarily on stage.
   • Michael Lomenda as Nick Massi, low man in the Four Seasons, as the NY Times headlined his obituary in 2000
   • Erich Bergen as the brilliant Bob Gaudio, who wrote the songs and then wrote Jersey Boys. Yep, he gets to specify the actor who plays him. He chose well in Erich Bergen.

   Joseph Russo doesn’t exactly jump off screen as Joe Pesci. Pesci went by Joey back then. In a Small Jersey kind of way he wasn’t just present at the creation, he was the Godfather in the creation of the Four Seasons. Not that kind of Godfather, the matchmaking kind of Godfather. Russo is an appealingly bright-eyed actor who gets to originate a classic line, in a prequel kind of way – “What’s funny about that?”

   Christopher Walken essays Jersey organized crime figure Gyp DeCarlo, Frankie Valli’s real Godfather. Walken carries plenty of gravitas, needless to say. When he says “Heeyyy” everybody pays attention.

   Selected Members of the Huge Cast

   • Mike Doyle as flamboyant producer and lyricist Bob Crewe
   • Steve Schirripa of Sopranos fame as Vito the barber
   • Kathrine Narducci as Frankie Vallie’s Mother
   • Lou Volpe as his Father, often bursting out in Italian
   • Johnny Cannizzaro as Nick DeVito, another of their young crime buddies
   • Michael Patrick McGill as Officer Mike, the Irish cop on the beat when Tommy DeVito gets Frankie Valli to be the driver in a safe stealing operation. That’s “safe stealing”, meaning Frankie got stuck driving a getaway car with a huge safe in its trunk. Not a good move.
   • Erica Piccininni as Frankie Valli’s paramour
   • Detectives Scott Vance & Steve Rankin
   • Ivar Brogger, the Judge who lets Frankie off with a warning
   • Scott Michael Vance as the Prison Guard that Tommy & Nick knew from on the inside

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    Clint Eastwood, Master Director, doesn’t fail in the great task of memorializing Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Far from it, his film shares sepia tones with Changeling, even if it doesn’t rise to the level of Clint’s great collaboration with Angelina Jolie.

    Frankie Valli watching Clint Eastwood on TV in 1964 is an amusing bit.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play OK 2.5

13. Music Really Great 4.5

    Would have loved more music, or at least hearing it when you could enjoy it more.

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.2

17. Sex Titillating 2.2

18. Violence Fierce 1.9

19. Rudeness Profane 2.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.5

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0