Posts
You’re Just Too Good to Be True
‘Jersey Boys,’ Eastwood’s Take on Showbiz Myth
By courtesy of Manohla Dargis.
At the end of “Jersey Boys,” Clint Eastwood’s likable, resolutely laid-back adaptation of the Broadway musical, the actors all FREEZE.
They’ve just performed their last song on a set that looks so artificial that you half-expect the Sharks and the Jets to leap into the frame.
Instead, that Jersey music man Frankie Valli (CASTELLUCCIO) and the other Seasons, along with a crowd of central-casting types, gather one last time and together warble and fancy-foot down a back-lot street.
They finish big and then they all stop, staring straight ahead as sweat pops and bodies tremble under the now harsh lighting.
That’s entertainment, baby, and it is hard work.
They’ve just performed their last song on a set that looks so artificial that you half-expect the Sharks and the Jets to leap into the frame.
Instead, that Jersey music man Frankie Valli (CASTELLUCCIO) and the other Seasons, along with a crowd of central-casting types, gather one last time and together warble and fancy-foot down a back-lot street.
They finish big and then they all stop, staring straight ahead as sweat pops and bodies tremble under the now harsh lighting.
That’s entertainment, baby, and it is hard work.
“Jersey Boys” is a strange film, and it’s a Clint Eastwood enterprise, both reasons to see it.
For those with a love of "doo-wop", it also provides a toe-tapping, ear-worming stroll down rock ’n’ roll memory lane that dovetails with that deeply cherished American song and dance about personal triumph over adversity through hard work, tough times and self-sacrifice.
It’s a redemption narrative that’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it.
No wonder it’s been such a popular trip.
The stage version of “Jersey Boys” opened in 2005 on Broadway, where it’s still going strong, and has long been printing money around the world, from Australia to South Africa.
For those with a love of "doo-wop", it also provides a toe-tapping, ear-worming stroll down rock ’n’ roll memory lane that dovetails with that deeply cherished American song and dance about personal triumph over adversity through hard work, tough times and self-sacrifice.
It’s a redemption narrative that’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it.
No wonder it’s been such a popular trip.
The stage version of “Jersey Boys” opened in 2005 on Broadway, where it’s still going strong, and has long been printing money around the world, from Australia to South Africa.
Like the original musical, the film was written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice and has a clever, inviting narrative gimmick.
All four of the Seasons take turns telling the group’s tale.
This has led to the musical’s being sloppily likened to “Rashomon,” a comparison that works only if you’ve never seen that 1950 Akira Kurosawa touchstone.
In “Rashomon,” four characters recount a traumatic episode in a forest — a woman is raped and her husband murdered — in separate, contradictory flashbacks.
Together, the four versions don’t add up to one unified, coherently climaxing story.
The mystery remains unsolved and the reminiscences remain contingent, which makes the film as much about storytelling as a crime.
All four of the Seasons take turns telling the group’s tale.
This has led to the musical’s being sloppily likened to “Rashomon,” a comparison that works only if you’ve never seen that 1950 Akira Kurosawa touchstone.
In “Rashomon,” four characters recount a traumatic episode in a forest — a woman is raped and her husband murdered — in separate, contradictory flashbacks.
Together, the four versions don’t add up to one unified, coherently climaxing story.
The mystery remains unsolved and the reminiscences remain contingent, which makes the film as much about storytelling as a crime.
The stakes and tension are lower in “Jersey Boys,” which is narrated largely in chronological order by the group’s four members, sometimes while they’re talking right into the camera.
Unlike “Rashomon,” these memoirists don’t necessarily return to the same scenes.
Instead, their story opens with some text that sets the place and time (New Jersey, the 1950s) before settling on Tommy DeVito (a charismatic Vincent Piazza), who’s speed-talking while sauntering down a street.
With the camera tagging along, DEVITO guides the story into a barber-shop, where a young Frankie Castelluccio is nervously training, as a local gangster, Gyp DeCarlo, holds court in a chair, telegraphing the Mob’s role in this story.
Unlike “Rashomon,” these memoirists don’t necessarily return to the same scenes.
Instead, their story opens with some text that sets the place and time (New Jersey, the 1950s) before settling on Tommy DeVito (a charismatic Vincent Piazza), who’s speed-talking while sauntering down a street.
With the camera tagging along, DEVITO guides the story into a barber-shop, where a young Frankie Castelluccio is nervously training, as a local gangster, Gyp DeCarlo, holds court in a chair, telegraphing the Mob’s role in this story.
The old-timey milieu of the barber-shop, a favorite staging ground for films about the Mafia (including “The Godfather”), is an early indication of Eastwood’s self-consciously artificial approach.
This is cemented in other early scenes, starting with Castelluccio and his parents slurping spaghetti while throwing around snatches of Italian, all in view of an ornamental wall clock that’s bracketed by images of the Pope and Frank Sinatra.
Minutes later, Castelluccio is out the door, waiting on a dark street and playing lookout for DeVito, who’s around the corner trying to steal a safe.
A beat cop emerges from the shadows with a smile and asks Castelluccio why he’s out.
Castelluccio says he’s wooing a girl and starts singing as if to prove it.
This is cemented in other early scenes, starting with Castelluccio and his parents slurping spaghetti while throwing around snatches of Italian, all in view of an ornamental wall clock that’s bracketed by images of the Pope and Frank Sinatra.
Minutes later, Castelluccio is out the door, waiting on a dark street and playing lookout for DeVito, who’s around the corner trying to steal a safe.
A beat cop emerges from the shadows with a smile and asks Castelluccio why he’s out.
Castelluccio says he’s wooing a girl and starts singing as if to prove it.
The whole thing looks and sounds so canned — from the conspicuousness of a set that’s been vacuumed of the dirt of real life to the goofily contrived setup — it’s a surprise that "The Bowery Boys" don’t swing by, too.
Every scene seems to point to another film allusion.
If the family-dinner caricatures register as mildly amusing, the bit with the cop is played even more broadly.
The events that immediately follow, showing DEVITO, CASTELLUCCIO and a third pal trying to pinch the safe, actually crosses into full-bore slapstick.
This escalation from small laughs to big ones helps establish an inaugural breeziness and serves as a reminder that, as a filmmaker and a performer, Eastwood has long put myth into play with realism.
Every scene seems to point to another film allusion.
If the family-dinner caricatures register as mildly amusing, the bit with the cop is played even more broadly.
The events that immediately follow, showing DEVITO, CASTELLUCCIO and a third pal trying to pinch the safe, actually crosses into full-bore slapstick.
This escalation from small laughs to big ones helps establish an inaugural breeziness and serves as a reminder that, as a filmmaker and a performer, Eastwood has long put myth into play with realism.
That tension reverberates throughout “Jersey Boys” as a mythopoeic tale emerges from thick accents ("dis", "dat" and "da odder"), false starts, personnel shifts and name changes.
A genius, ROBERTO Gaudio, enters the group courtesy of a mutual friend: Joey a.k.a. the future Joe Pesci (an amusing Joseph Russo who’s got Mr. Pesci’s “O.K., O.K.” down).
CASTELLUCCIO rechristens himself Valley only to Italianize it as "Valli", and then he and the other guys, including Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda), land on the name the Four Seasons.
They meet a producer, Bob Crewe and together find their groove.
And, in 1962, they begin mining gold, starting with “Sherry” and “Big Girls Don’t Cry.”
A genius, ROBERTO Gaudio, enters the group courtesy of a mutual friend: Joey a.k.a. the future Joe Pesci (an amusing Joseph Russo who’s got Mr. Pesci’s “O.K., O.K.” down).
CASTELLUCCIO rechristens himself Valley only to Italianize it as "Valli", and then he and the other guys, including Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda), land on the name the Four Seasons.
They meet a producer, Bob Crewe and together find their groove.
And, in 1962, they begin mining gold, starting with “Sherry” and “Big Girls Don’t Cry.”
The songs and some of the actors pull you into the story even as other performers and some of Eastwood’s choices wrench you out.
Young originated the role of CASTELLUCCIO on Broadway, and he persuasively approximates CASTELLUCCIO’s patented strangled falsetto if not its weird beauty.
Young certainly catches your ear and attention when he’s scaling those heights.
But once the music fades, so does he.
That’s partly because the CASTELLUCCIO of “Jersey Boys” turns out to be really dull: nice, square and uncomplicated to a fault.
That might not matter if Young were a more expressive screen presence.
Yet he’s oddly inert, especially around his eyes, which here — partly because of Eastwood’s fondness for working with a dark, almost monochromatic palette — remain frustratingly opaque.
Young originated the role of CASTELLUCCIO on Broadway, and he persuasively approximates CASTELLUCCIO’s patented strangled falsetto if not its weird beauty.
Young certainly catches your ear and attention when he’s scaling those heights.
But once the music fades, so does he.
That’s partly because the CASTELLUCCIO of “Jersey Boys” turns out to be really dull: nice, square and uncomplicated to a fault.
That might not matter if Young were a more expressive screen presence.
Yet he’s oddly inert, especially around his eyes, which here — partly because of Eastwood’s fondness for working with a dark, almost monochromatic palette — remain frustratingly opaque.
It’s disappointing that Eastwood, a director who can convey extraordinary depths of feeling in his work, didn’t do more with this material.
CASTELLUCCIO’s scenes with his family tend to be embarrassingly bad, including a blowout with his wife, Maria (Renée Marino), that devolves into a wincing battle between the selfish male artist and the volubly unhappy woman at home.
It’s enough to make you wish that films like these didn’t bother with the little women in the lives of these big men.
Worse yet are the scenes with Frankie and his troubled daughter, Francine (played by different performers), whose role here is, appallingly, to do little more than pump her father’s tears.
The family stuff seriously undermines the musical’s claims on the truth.
CASTELLUCCIO’s scenes with his family tend to be embarrassingly bad, including a blowout with his wife, Maria (Renée Marino), that devolves into a wincing battle between the selfish male artist and the volubly unhappy woman at home.
It’s enough to make you wish that films like these didn’t bother with the little women in the lives of these big men.
Worse yet are the scenes with Frankie and his troubled daughter, Francine (played by different performers), whose role here is, appallingly, to do little more than pump her father’s tears.
The family stuff seriously undermines the musical’s claims on the truth.
“Jersey Boys” at first seems like a curious choice for Eastwood, particularly given the heft of many of his films.
And it may be that he just liked the show.
It’s hard not to think that there’s something personal here, too, as suggested by the clip from “Rawhide” — the 1950s television show that broke Eastwood — that plays before a character loses his virginity.
This moment could be read as a Hitchcockian cameo or as a slyly suggestive joke about what turns boys into men.
Yet, like the movie’s four finally harmonious narrators and its showstopping finale, the cameo is also a reminder that this isn’t just about a group, its struggles and comeback.
It’s also about an American myth of success and all the singing, the smiling and the dissembling that goes into its making.
And it may be that he just liked the show.
It’s hard not to think that there’s something personal here, too, as suggested by the clip from “Rawhide” — the 1950s television show that broke Eastwood — that plays before a character loses his virginity.
This moment could be read as a Hitchcockian cameo or as a slyly suggestive joke about what turns boys into men.
Yet, like the movie’s four finally harmonious narrators and its showstopping finale, the cameo is also a reminder that this isn’t just about a group, its struggles and comeback.
It’s also about an American myth of success and all the singing, the smiling and the dissembling that goes into its making.
No comments:
Post a Comment