Jersey Boys (2014)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
A musical biopic of the Four Seasons—the rise, the tough times and personal clashes, and the ultimate triumph of a group of friends whose music became symbolic of a generation. Far from a mere tribute concert, it gets to the heart of the relationships at the centre of the group, with a special focus on frontman Frankie Valli, the small kid with the big falsetto.
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What critics compared Jersey Boys to
While only a dream sequence, “Sully’s” opening feels less like a stunt from a director who alternates between sober, seemingly timeless portraits of exceptional personalities (“American Sniper,” “Million Dollar Baby”), and corny, cardboard melodramas too old-fashioned in their approach (“Jersey Boys,” “Changeling”), occasionally landing somewhere in the middle (à la “Flags of Our Fathers”).
Sully fits nicely alongside Eastwood’s recent run of films showing the process whereby images and narratives of heroism and romantic longing are manufactured and marketed, something which runs through such otherwise disparate works as Flags, Invictus, J. Edgar, and Jersey Boys—though the same preoccupation can be found functioning much further back in Eastwood’s corpus, in titles like White Hunter Black Heart, Bronco Billy, or even directorial debut Play Misty for Me, a thriller set into motion by a woman’s inability to separate a nighttime DJ’s smooth line of on-air bullshit from the flesh-and-blood man.
Like his previous lackluster effort, Jersey Boys, Eastwood fails to capture the spirit that undoubtedly inspired his interest in the project.
Clint Eastwood (four-time Oscar-winner and all-round US national treasure) directed, co-produced and wrote and performed the main musical theme for this true tale shortly after completing American Sniper and Jersey Boys, and that’s quite an achievement, given that he recently turned 86, an age when many of us would have trouble getting to the movies, let alone actually making one (or three).
When he directed Jersey Boys (2014), it was a surprise.
Director Clint Eastwood is interested in how characters, particularly men, cope with celebrity or notoriety and their shadow of their own defining deeds; the closest parallel is Flags of Our Fathers , but similar thematic material can be found in Unforgiven, Gran Torino, American Sniper and even Jersey Boys.
It makes efforts like Clint Eastwood’s “Jersey Boys” and the “Pitch Perfect” series look like crude cave drawings by comparison.