by George Wolf
Jersey Boys
The end credits in Jersey Boys roll over a musical number that bursts suddenly with toe-tapping exuberance. While it’s a fine way to send an audience home smiling, it’s also an unfortunate reminder of one of the elements missing from the previous 130-odd minutes.
Director Clint Eastwood’s film version of the Tony award-winning tribute to the Four Seasons ends up caught in an awkward space between stage and screen. Either Eastwood had too much reverence for the source material, or too little concern for what differentiates successful projects on stage and on film.
Eastwood stocks the cast with stage veterans, starting at the top, with John Lloyd Young reprising his award-winning Broadway role as lead singer Frankie Vallli. Valli has one of the most unique voices in pop music history, and though Young can’t match it, he comes impressively close.
Still, the musical numbers are strangely lacking in punch. Though the songs are instantly recognizable, the performances are filmed with a detached, esoteric quality, lacking the period authenticity of Alison Anders’s Grace of My Heart or the joyous fun of Tom Hanks’s That Thing You Do.
Screenwriters Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice adapt their own musical book with a condensed version of the Rashomon-style storytelling utilized on the stage. Group members Tommy DeVito, Nick Massi, Bob Gaudio and Valli still offer conflicting, first-person views on their shared history, but the melodramatic tone mutes any possible resonance.
Many of the performances seem equally forced, as Eastwood can’t get the theatre-trained actors to dial it down and realize they no longer need to emote for the folks in the back row.
Eastwood does make the effort to include his requisite nods to Catholicism, as well as cheesy in-jokes on actor Joe Pesci’s pivotal role in Four Seasons history, and the director’s own “spaghetti western” background.
Ultimately, the boy’s rise from petty criminals to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members deserves better. Jersey Boys keeps their story at arm’s length, never bringing any intimacy or magic to the screen adaptation. It may well leave you humming a few tunes, but that’s about as deep an impression as it makes.
Think Like a Man Too
The single most surprising thing about 2012’s Think Like a Man may have been that I did not hate it. The film identifies five potential couples, highlights relationship flaws, then advises the women on how to re-train and trap their men.
Ugh.
And yet, as the misguided, sexist, illogical “comedy” unfurled, I began to believe that Kevin Hart could perhaps save any bad film by virtue of his inexhaustible humor.
This theory has been put to the test, as it appears the poor man is destined never to get a script for anything other than a bad movie: Ride Along, About Last Night, Grudge Match – good Lord, Grudge Match!
So, while Hart proves his own talent time and again, he’s also proven that no one human man can possibly save every bad movie director Tim Story wants to make. Case in point: Think Like a Man Too.
We check back in on all the happy couples of the previous installment as they meet in Vegas for one duo’s nuptials. But first, they will divide on gender lines for bachelor/bachelorette parties.
Nothing says fresh like a bachelor party movie set in Vegas.
Actually, stale is an excellent word to describe this lifeless retread. Story regurgitates every overused image and idea from about a dozen movies and a lengthy Vegas ad campaign. Do you think there’s an ultra-luxurious suite? How about some glamorous poolside action? Gambling antics? Rain Man mentions?
Don’t tell me there are strippers?!!
Why, yes, you can expect drunken debauchery (though nothing too raunchy that it can’t be forgiven) that leads to a race to make the ceremony.
I swear to God, it wouldn’t have surprised me to find out there was a tiger in the bathroom.
You know what might have been interesting? An Omaha wedding.
Instead, we get more and more and excruciatingly more of the same, shoveled shamelessly at us in the hopes that Hart can somehow make it funny.
Well, he can’t. The man is not superhuman. And that means there’s nothing at all to distract you from everything that is wrong with this film – which is everything.
The Rover
Make it 2 for 2 for Australia’s David Michod, and I’m not talking World Cup penalty kicks.
Four years ago, Michod served up Animal Kingdom, an utterly compelling feature-length debut as writer and director.
The Rover is his follow up, and much like its predecessor, it takes measured approach to getting under your skin.
The setting is an Australian wasteland, ten years after a “collapse.” We assume its a financial one, as we see Eric (Guy Pearce) angrily tell a man selling gasoline that “it’s just paper..money doesn’t mean anything anymore!”
When three men, fleeing from some sort of bloody incident, wreck their car, they steal Eric’s, which will not do. Though he quickly gets their stalled car running again, Eric’s not interested in a straight-up trade. He wants his car back. Badly.
One of the fleeing men, Henry, has left something behind: his “dim-witted” brother Rey (Robert Pattinson). When Rey crosses paths with Eric, one brother is soon forced to hunt the other across the barren, desolate miles.
Don’t let the quick cuts in the trailer fool you, the story often feels as empty as the strikingly- filmed landscape. But Michod’s deliberate pace slowly sets in your bones, fueled by the two lead performances.
Pearce is mesmerizing, sketching the intense edges of a mysterious traveler. Where was he going in the first place, and why is he so deadly accurate with that rifle? What’s so important about his car?
Pattinson slams the door on all those “Team Edward” jokes with a breakout performance. Reaching depths of nuance he’s never before displayed, Pattinson brings heartbreak to Rey’s conflicting allegiances without ever copping out to melodrama.
Michod also peppers the trip with indelible vignettes, as smaller, unique characters float in and out of the tale to fully portray a brutal, desperate world that feels shockingly possible.
In many ways, The Rover is a throwback to classic Westerns, with a nearly anonymous figure on a bloody, single- minded mission for revenge. You may scoff at the simplicity of the finale, but I’m betting you’ll find yourself thinking about it long afterward.
Get more of my movie review at MaddWolf.com!
Photo credit: Warner Bros.