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JERSEY BOYS. Directed by Clint Eastwood, with John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, Michael Lomenda, Vincent Piazza, Christopher Walken, Mike Doyle, Renee Marino, Erica Piccininni, Joseph Russo, Donnie Kehr, Kathrine Narducci and Steven Schirripa.
REVIEW: Todd McCarthy
A DASH of showbiz pizzazz has been lost, but welcome emotional depth gained with the big-screen version of the still-thriving theatrical smash Jersey Boys.
Approaching its 10th year on Broadway, the highly entertaining account of the chequered career of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons is the 13th longest-running show in Broadway history and continues to flourish on tour.
The film’s basic fidelity to its source, along with the music’s continuing appeal, suggests solid prospects among mainstream audiences for this story about working-class street guys who made it big, but could not entirely surmount their personal limitations.
Still, commercial uncertainties attach to the potential interest of young viewers unfamiliar with the band and musical milieu of a half-century ago, as well as in foreign-language markets.
Creatively, the big question here is how the seemingly odd match-up of Jersey Boys and director Clint Eastwood worked out. As has been widely noted, there’s perhaps no one less Joisey than West Coast jazz aficionado Eastwood. Questions have also been raised about the great old pro’s feel for Broadway musical tropes as well as his tendency for deliberate pacing.
Although his work may lack the snap and precision of a Bob Fosse, not to mention the dynamic cutting of directors of the music video generation, it must be recalled that Eastwood has always displayed an enduring affinity for American popular music, an interest expressed in his music scene-oriented features ( Honkytonk Man and Bird, not to mention his still-unrealised remake of A Star Is Born), the many music-based documentaries he has produced and the scores he has written for seven of his films.
Less tangible but more crucial is the director’s feel for the struggle, the long road that must often be traversed to achieve show business success, the price that must often be paid.
Far more than in the stage show, which acknowledges the hardships but cuts back quickly to fun stuff, there is emphasis on how being on the road away from mates and children inevitably takes a heavy toll, and on the considerable cost of a determined commitment to success in the arts.
While this is hardly banner news, its highlighting enriches the material emotionally and dramatically, providing a bracing dose of melancholy before the final musical surge. Like The Four Seasons, Eastwood persevered through ups and downs during the 1950s and into the early 1960s; that he’s sympathetic with their personal and professional travails is evident and adds heft to the film.
Jersey Boys may be a jukebox musical, but it’s a jukebox musical with a good book as well as a raft of songs that remain as infectious as they were five decades back. For the film, the show’s original book writers, Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, have retained their Rashomon-style structure of offering different points of view of events by shifting the narrative voice from one band member to another.
Eastwood has smoothly incorporated the direct-address technique in the film, something mainstream audiences may now accept more easily than before in the wake of House of Cards.
Something else the film gets away with is having a 38-year-old actor play Valli as a 16-year-old. John Lloyd Young originally played the role on Broadway in 2005. While other actor-singers have convincingly recreated Valli’s dynamic falsetto vocal tones on stage, Young had the indelible knack of evoking the original’s sound in his Tony Award-winning performance, which no one has been able to top.
As little Francesco Castelluccio, the future star, grows up in working-class Belleville with the pope and Frank Sinatra staring down from mantelpiece pictures and pals who seem far more likely to wind up as made men than as showbiz luminaries, even if one of the more eager of them was the real-life Joe Pesci, a crucial supporting character here, portrayed by Joseph Russo.
For a while, it’s sort of American Graffiti meets Mean Streets, with Frankie and some sidewalk pals, notably good-looking small-time con Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza), pulling pranks and an amusingly stupid botched robbery in a neighbourhood reigned over by benevolent godfather-type Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo (a smooth Christopher Walken). Amusingly, the name of Pesci’s character in GoodFellas is Tommy DeVitto.
It’s 1951, the American pop scene is at its most syrupy and the musical horizons of Frankie, Tommy and their momentary cohorts are limited to tacky lounges and clubs.
Where Pesci figures is in introducing the boys to Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen), a straight-arrow, comparatively clean-cut kid who, at 15, has written one national hit (the immortal Short Shorts) for his group the Royal Teens. Proud, hot-headed Tommy resists, but Bob’s amazingly facile songwriting skills, combined with the recording savvy of producer and sometime music co-writer Bob Crewe (Mike Doyle), put the newly christened The Four Seasons (formerly The Four Lovers) in the groove for massive success.
Like the show, the film bounces through the pre-fame exposition in an agreeable, surfacey way typical of Broadway musicals, establishing the essentials of Frankie’s talent and earnestness, Tommy’s short-tempered enthusiasm and recklessness, and a feeling that something’s coming and it’s gonna be good. Sure enough, at the halfway point, once bassist Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) completes the band and Crewe takes the reins, the floodgates open and the hits just keep coming: Sherry, Big Girls Don’t Cry and Walk Like a Man were No 1 hits in 1962-63. The roll continued with Rag Doll, Bye Bye Baby, Let’s Hang On, Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, and others.
But the silver lining of success hides dark and turbulent clouds. Unknown to the others, Tommy, who doubles as the band’s manager, is deep in debt to the Mob, requiring the involvement of Gyp and Herculean labours by Frankie to extricate him, while Frankie’s near-constant absence from home leads to guilt about tragic family events.
Still, as in most musicals, there’s an uptick after disappointment and this is easily found in The Four Seasons’ catalogue. The continuing durability of these songs and Valli’s uniquely expressive high voice are the biggest reasons for the stage show’s great success.
Few other American pop groups with roots in the pre-British invasion period remain as listenable today as The Four Seasons and this, combined with the GoodFellas-lite backdrop, gives Jersey Boys, on the stage and on the screen, all the juice it needs.
But if the ultimate aim of the theatrical version, which began life at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse in 2004 and was fine-tuned and recast before hitting Broadway, was to get the audience on its feet for the final feel-good medley, Eastwood goes for a more mixed mood, combining the joy of the music with what Valli, in particular, lost and could not regain.
Rather than lip-synching to pre-recorded tracks, the performers all sang during filming to live behind-the-scenes musical accompaniment in the interests of maximum spontaneity and credibility. Musically and dramatically, all four actors playing the band members register distinctively.
Young has Frankie down cold, Piazza (also in his late thirties) sharply expresses Tommy’s streetwise edge and impulsiveness, but with enough likeability to suggest why everyone always forgave the guy, while Bergen, a veteran of the Las Vegas production, is appealing as the outsider who provided the essential missing ingredient for the band.
Lomenda’s Massi, the last to join the group and the first to leave, hangs in the background much of the time, but finally emerges interestingly when he takes over as a narrator.
Doyle’s brashly confident Bob Crewe provides not only energy but interesting gay currents in an otherwise macho Italian-American scene. Bathed in muted hues dominated by tans and browns, the film has a warm look, courtesy of Tom Stern’s cinematography, James J Murakami’s production design and Deborah Hopper’s costumes. One dazzling effects shot rises from ground level up the façade of Manhattan’s legendary Brill Building to peer in the windows of multiple floors’ worth of music publishers and agents.
Occasionally, however, the feeling of the studio backlot is inescapable, and there are a couple of Jersey neighbourhood vistas that simply look too California, including one with mountains visible in the far background. – Reuters/ Hollywood Reporter