Oh what a night, but Clint Eastwood’s Jersey Boys falls a little short of the mark.
This film had a great cast, great music and a great storyline, but there was something missing. Clint Eastwood was the director and he didn’t seem to know what to do with this style of movie. The problem was the movie wasn’t really a musical, but there was too much music to be “a film with music.” Unfortunately a lot of the music had dialogue spoken through it or was played in the background of the action. I think we only saw 6 or 7 songs performed in their entirety, which was quite disappointing.
Eastwood also chose not to change his directorial style for this very different movie. He still used his normal darkly lit scenes and his annoying camera work that is always slightly looking up at the action.
All the leading actors in this film were fantastic with notable performances from Christopher Walken, John Lloyd Young, Vincent Piazza and Mike Doyle. The Jersey Boys all sounded amazing and worked well together. As I mentioned earlier the acting was one of the strongest points of the movie and the whole cast gave great performances.
John Lloyd Young (Frankie Valli) was the only cast member to play the same role he originated in the Broadway show. He aptly captured Frankie’s journey from a naïve teenager to a dedicated, hardworking and loyal man. Lloyd Young also had the strongest voice in the film and he really did have Frankie’s vocal qualities.
As this is a jukebox musical there were no new songs written for the film, but the songs we saw the full performances of were exceptionally good. My only issue with the musical numbers is that we got a group finale at the end of the movie, which felt misplaced and forced.
Overall an enjoyable and interesting movie that I would recommend to fans of the band and the musical, but I felt it did lack the final polish.
3.5 Stars
Review by Benjamin Maio Mackay
Movie screening courtesy of Palace Nova Cinemas
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