Musicals are virtually scientifically engineered to elevate your spirits. Plots be damned, you’ll be able to’t assist however really feel slightly elated after two-plus hours of watching individuals lower a rug whereas singing about their innermost emotions. It is a basic precept that allowed Broadway titans like Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber to reimagine tragic love tales and gothic horror thrillers as crowd-pleasing spectacles about homicide, revenge, and, most terrifying of all, having to cope with a needy, egotistical lead actor. Even after they finish in sorrow and despair, you continue to go away the theater buzzing their catchiest earworms on an endorphin excessive (or, in the event you’ve solely simply watched “Cats” for the primary time, maybe a special type of excessive).
What occurs, then, whenever you rent the authority on cinematic melancholy that’s twenty first century Clint Eastwood to show your Broadway smash right into a film? You get “Jersey Boys,” presumably one of the downbeat and dour musicals ever dedicated to the display. In the event you ever puzzled whether or not “Mystic River” and even “Million Greenback Child” is perhaps only a tad much less miserable if their characters sang about their feelings in between the moments of anguish, loss, and turmoil, the reply, judging by the outcomes right here, is … not likely. Nonetheless, whereas it is not arduous to know why “Jersey Boys” was a flop upon its launch in 2014, that very same somberness additionally makes it considered one of a sort within the trendy film musical panorama.
Eastwood’s Jersey Boys is an anti-Broadway crowd-pleaser
Eastwood’s grounded, somber depiction of Sixties rock ‘n’ roll sensation The 4 Seasons’ fast ascension to fame and the nice (and particularly the dangerous) occasions that adopted is more true to its supply materials than you would possibly suspect. The unique jukebox Broadway musical written by Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman (sure, as within the Oscar-winning “Annie Corridor” co-writer) eschews the thought of being a fantastical portrayal of the band’s story, presenting itself as one thing akin to a stay theater documentary. In line with that, the Man With No Identify usually avoids the type of flights of fancy you’d discover in a biopic musical like “Rocketman.” As an alternative, virtually the entire songs are diegetic and introduced in a sensible mild (the top credit apart), whether or not it is the Seasons singing stay in sequences that Eastwood and his trusty cinematographer Tom Stern tone finished by capturing with their typical regular, unfussy protection and subdued black-and-brown colour palette or the group’s music getting used because the soundtrack for montages, lots of which are likely to deal with the extra doleful beats within the band’s story.
What you find yourself with is a film that performs slightly like a bummer model of “That Factor You Do!” … and that is even earlier than the Seasons’ breakout success (because of all-timer pop classics like “Sherry” and “Massive Ladies Do not Cry”) is sullied by the band’s in-fighting, mob money owed, and familial hardships. However the place Tom Hanks’ musical dramedy a couple of fictional ’60s band sky-rocketing up the Billboard charts principally manages to offset its cutesy nostalgia with extra sobering moments, Eastwood’s relentlessly gritty method clashes with the scenes the place “Jersey Boys” desires to be extra light-hearted and charming. Most folk agree on this level too, as evidenced by the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes scores (51 % from critics, with the viewers rating solely a bit increased at 62 %) and disappointing field workplace turnout ($67 million worldwide in opposition to a $40 million funds).
Nonetheless, with its soulful music, themes of flawed masculinity, and a wistful story concerning the value that comes with a lifetime spent within the highlight, “Jersey Boys” is actually as private as the rest Eastwood has ever directed. Regardless of its missteps, it even succeeds as, primarily, an anti-Broadway crowd-pleaser and that each one too uncommon specimen of a musical which will really go away you feeling extra despondent than you probably did moving into. (Y’know, if that is your factor.)
