I have been on a musical binge for three weeks now. Having seen several stage versions of music eras and musical artists from the ’50s to the ’90s (Carole King, Queen and Tupac), I settled in to enjoy the music of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons in Jersey Boys. I have seen the stage version twice. I was disappointed.
Jersey Boys (John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, Vincent Piazza, Michael Lomenda, Christopher Walken) – Sorry, Clint, it just doesn’t work as a movie. Jersey Boys, a wonderful jukebox musical that has been incredibly successful around the world, tells the story of Frankie Valli. The play features the actors speaking to the audience about the history of the Four Seasons and each member’s personal view of the reasons for their rise and fall. Clint Eastwood’s movie does the same thing, breaking the “fourth wall” constantly and annoyingly.
It is rare for a stage musical to work on the big screen; these media are quite different. Jukebox musicals are almost doomed. Did you see Mamma Mia!? Stage plays are intimate, meant for an audience of 500-1500 people.
Jersey Boys debuted at The La Jolla Playhouse, which just finished a run of a new meant-for-Broadway musical called Chasing the Song, a story about the famous New York Brill Building song factory of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Having just seen it, I was reminded why jukebox musicals work wonderfully with a pit band/orchestra and live singers … and why they don’t work on the screen. We go to the theater to see live singers playing live music in a limited setting. Film is a grand medium.
While the movie Jersey Boys provides realistic photography of the 1950s and ‘60s, Eastwood’s almost film noir treatment seems oddly out of place. The story is thin, of course. All musicals have thin scripts because the book or screenplay is just a device to bridge the songs. While this story is a mostly true version of Valli’s life from the streets of New Jersey to his “climb (on) the ladder fortune and fame,” it does not effectively link the songs to the story. For example, Frankie sings My Eyes Adored You to his young daughter (whose name is not Sherry or Dawn) about a decade before the song was written or recorded.
This problem plagued the stage musical, too, but we knew the play was really a tribute concert. The movie could have enriched the story, taken us deeper, and given it depth. Instead, it just seems confused by whether it was A Chorus Line or Rent, merely movie versions of the plays featuring most of the original cast, or Mamma Mia!, a star-studded travelogue (who could forget that horrendous singing performance by Pierce Brosnan?).
Eastwood uses talented, unknown actors John Lloyd Young (as Valli), Erich Bergen (as master songwriter and performer Bob Gaudio), Vincent Piazza (as the group’s founder and hustler Tommy DeVito), and Michael Lomenda (as bassist Nick Massi) as the Four Seasons; legend Christopher Walken as the sentimental mobster who practically adopts Valli; and Joseph Russo as Joe Pesci, the actor who had a major role in the group’s history. The acting is fine; the singing is excellent.
The best part is the curtain call at the end (or the Eastwood cameo). That is where Clint gave up on the notion that Jersey Boys: The Movie was anything more than a play on steroids. My suggestion is to see the play again or dust off the 45s or the albums and enjoy the real Four Seasons.