Musicals are virtually scientifically engineered to carry your spirits. Plots be damned, you possibly can’t assist however really feel just a little 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 take care of a needy, egotistical lead actor. Even once they finish in sorrow and despair, you continue to depart the theater buzzing their catchiest earworms on an endorphin excessive (or, if you’ve only just watched “Cats” for the first time, maybe a distinct form of excessive).
What occurs, then, if 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 screen. Should you ever puzzled whether or not “Mystic River” and even “Million Greenback Child” could be 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 … probably not. Nonetheless, whereas it is not exhausting to know why “Jersey Boys” was a flop upon its launch in 2014, that very same somberness additionally makes it one among a form 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’ speedy 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 Title typically avoids the form of flights of fancy you’d discover in a biopic musical like “Rocketman.” As an alternative, nearly the entire songs are diegetic and offered 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 completed by taking pictures with their typical regular, unfussy protection and subdued black-and-brown shade palette or the group’s music getting used because the soundtrack for montages, lots of which are inclined to deal with the extra doleful beats within the band’s story.
What you find yourself with is a film that performs just a little 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 “Large Women 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 strategy 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 ratings (51 % from critics, with the viewers rating solely a bit larger at 62 %) and disappointing field workplace turnout ($67 million worldwide in opposition to a $40 million price range).
Nonetheless, with its soulful music, themes of flawed masculinity, and a wistful story concerning the worth that comes with a lifetime spent within the highlight, “Jersey Boys” is actually as private as anything else Eastwood has ever directed. Regardless of its missteps, it even succeeds as, basically, an anti-Broadway crowd-pleaser and that every one too uncommon specimen of a musical that will really depart you feeling extra despondent than you probably did moving into. (Y’know, if that is your factor.)
