Film Review – Jersey Boys (2014)

Clint Eastwood finds himself between a rock and hard place, or more accurately between Goodfellas and That Thing You Do, with this misfiring adaptation of the acclaimed Broadway musical, Jersey Boys. Any way you slice it, the music of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons is pretty much instantly recognisable and eminently sing-able. Amazingly though, Eastwood manages to suck almost all the fun out of such bona fide pop classic as “Sherry” and “Walk Like a Man” with this careless, monotonous waste of time. Jersey Boys tries, and fails, to be a gangster movie, biopic and knockabout comedy all at the same time.

In what must rank as one of cinema’s greatest blunders, Eastwood focuses the film’s attention away from the songs themselves and pushes the music into the background. This morbidly dull tactic forces you to concentrate on the interminable intra-politics of the group and deprives you of anything approaching a full-bodied sing-along. It’s not until the closing credits that we get our first proper chance to belt out a musical number. Clearly Eastwood was more interested in the groups more disreputable side, but 135 grey, queasy minutes of pettiness and crime, with the odd bit misjudged comedy, is not going to win over any new fans. It’s almost as if Eastwood’s intention is to actively dissuade new listeners from seeking out The Four Seasons’ back catalogue.

We join the scene to find, falsetto wunderkind, Frankie (John Lloyd Young) working in a New Jersey barber shop, attending to local mob boss and kingpin Gyp DeCarlo (Christopher Walken). Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) muses that the only way for guys like them to escape the low-flying ennui of their existence is one of three ways: the army, organised crime or show business. “For us, it was two out of three” says Tommy, which is Eastwood’s cue to devote as much effort as humanly possible digging into every crevice and cupboard to present his vision of the dark side of the Four Seasons. Their rise to fame, heyday and eventual fall is punctuated with run-ins with loan sharks, mob bosses and underlined by family absenteeism.

Characters address the audience directly with a disquieting degree of regularity, musing on the ups and downs on their time in the limelight and the in-band dynamic. It’s supposed to shine a light and add a degree of humanity to the popstars’ characters, but they remain as underwhelmingly two-dimensional as ever. When Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) elucidates upon his decision to quit the band in the mid-sixties, he likens himself to the group’s “Ringo”, the “one at the back with the bass”. Your initial reaction is to agree with him and say: “Oh yes, you are the one at the back, the one with the bass”, immediately before asking him politely who he is and what his business could be. Such is the slenderness of the film’s storytelling and characterisation.

It’s all a bit unfair on the cast, who reprise their Broadway roles, and, on the odd occasion, do a fairly excellent impression of the Four Seasons. John Lloyd Young in particular is startlingly good as Valli, but he’s sold short by a drab script which fails to provide anything like a good enough showcase for the music.

[rating=2]
Chris Banks

Genre:
Biography, Drama, Musical
Distributor:
Warner Bros UK
Rating: 15
Running Time:
134 Minutes
Director:
Clint Eastwood
Cast:
John Lloyd Young, Erich Begen, Vincent Piazza, Michael Lomenda, Christopher Walken

About the Author

chris Banks

View All Posts