Jersey Boys, while not great cinema, is definitely a fun time at the movies. We might have expected great cinema because this is Clint Eastwood’s version of the Broadway musical, itself a show biz bio of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The acting is a little uneven, the female parts are underwritten and some parts drag. But what Jersey Boys does offer – the Four Season’s evocative pop hits, a couple charismatic performances and a dash of Christopher Walken – is worth the trip to the theater.
The story’s arc is a familiar one – after paying their dues with years of bottom-scraping gigs, a bunch of nobodies achieve overnight fame and wealth and then destruct. Three things are a little different about these guys. First, the core of the group is mobbed up (and you can see how the real Frankie Valli could later play a mobster so well in The Sopranos). Second, their catalyst is the pop music-writing genius Bob Gaudio, a suburban teen who joins the hardscrabble threesome from a tough neighborhood and serves them their hits: Sherry, Big Girls Don’t Cry, Walk Like a Man, Rag Doll, Dawn (Go Away) and Can’t Take My Eyes Off You. Finally, the cause of the group’s downfall is neither external (e.g., crooked business manager or evil record company) nor pervasive substance abuse.
Eastwood tells the story in four segments – each from the perspective of one of the guys – and this works pretty well. He gets a big boost from the performances of Vincent Piazza as the cocky group leader, Erich Bergen as the creative mastermind Gaudio and Mike Doyle as their flamboyant producer. John Lloyd Young reprises his Broadway role as the group’s big star, lead singer Frankie Valli. Young can do Valli’s very distinctive voice, but has a very limited emotional range. And it turns out that Valli, because he’s a pretty square guy, has the least interesting story of the group. When Valli does have relationship angst, the story gets bogged down. Michael Lomenda plays the fourth guy and gets to ask the plaintive question, “What if you’re Ringo?”
Jersey Boys also contains yet another delightful turn by Christopher Walken, this time as the Four Seasons’ mobster mentor. Walken himself started out as a chorus boy, and it’s fun to see him holding his own in the grand musical finale. And remember the young and dreamy Christopher Walken belting out The Four Seasons’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off You in The Deer Hunter’s great bar scene? It’s near the beginning of this trailer.
Jersey Boys is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
