Jersey Boys

Year of Release: 2014     Directed by Clint Eastwood. Starring John Lloyd Young, Vincent Piazza, Michael Lomenda, Erich Bergen, Mike Doyle, Christopher Walken, and Joseph Russo.

Formulaic but mostly enjoyable, and if not enjoyable, certainly watchable. Beyond that I am not sure there is much more to say about Jersey Boys. I suppose I should add that its target audience, those who have fond memories of listening to Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons as young adults as well as those who appreciate their unique sound, will absolutely love it.

Likewise, if one finds Valli’s unique nasal sound insufferable, then I imagine he will most likely feel the same way about this film. Personally, while I do not think The Four Seasons were one of the greatest bands, I do enjoy their music and think they were a good band, even if, as one critic points out in the film, some of their songs had a tendency to be derivative.

While I most certainly enjoyed Jersey Boys, I cannot deny that the film itself suffers to some degree from the same derivative quality that debatably plagued The Four Seasons’ songs. There are random instances of Scorsese influences throughout, the storyline is very generic, and having all four band members act as narrators causes the story to lose focus as it haphazardly recounts different events, unable to settle on a definitive perspective from which to tell the story.

The film opens with Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) breaking the fourth wall, promising the audience the true version of how The Four Seasons started. The camera follows Tommy to the local barber shop where Frankie Castelluccio -soon to be Valli – (John Lloyd Young) works as an assistant. At the shop, it becomes clear that Frankie has a powerful friend in the local mafia boss Gyp DeCarlo (Christopher Walken, in a performance right out of a Scorsese film). That friendship will come into play towards the end of the film, but until then, DeCarlo mostly disappears once he makes a few comments that the world will know Frankie’s voice.

After a few run-ins with the law, Tommy’s band loses their lead singer, and Tommy decides to give the position to Frankie so they have a trio: Frankie on lead vocals, Tommy on lead guitar and tenor vocals, and Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) on bass guitar and bass vocals. Since trios are falling out of fashion, Tommy’s friend Joe Pesci (yes, that Joe Pesci played by Joseph Russo) introduces them to Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen), a keyboardist and composer, who is eager to write for Frankie’s unique falsetto voice.

Once the film introduces Bob, he primarily takes over the narration, detailing how the band agreed to hire him, how they came up with the name The Four Seasons, and how they became famous by recording with Bob Crewe (Mike Doyle). After several years of incredible success, sixteen number one hits, and an appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, the inevitable setback occurs.

After Bob Gaudio’s narration culminates with a disastrous fallout, Nick begins breaking the fourth wall to tell his version of events. The film flashes back two years and recounts the lead up to the inevitable fallout from the quiet band member’s perspective. Shifting the narration to Nick was an interesting choice, but I am not convinced it was a good one. The fallout was obviously coming, because there were too many strong, conflicting personalities in The Four Seasons, most notably Tommy and Bob. When the film focused on their perspectives, it set up a good contrast. When the film introduced a third narrator, the sense of conflict and plot direction was lost, and too much of the film ended up feeling like mildly interesting vignettes.

Breaking the fourth wall is often maligned by critics, but in Jersey Boys I think it worked for the most part. It created an atmosphere of down to earth simplicity and gave the feeling of being there at a concert.

John Lloyd Young reprises the role he won a Tony for originating on Broadway, and his ability to emulate Frankie Valli’s actual voice is very impressive. The entire cast clearly has a blast performing the musical numbers, and their enjoyment is somewhat infectious.

The Scorsese references make the film unsure whether it is a gritty story of struggling backstreet boys from New Jersey or a tale celebrating the rise of a famous American band. Portraying the characters as seedy Scorsese-esque gangster-types does not help. Even Scorsese reigned in the grit for his musical, New York, New York. However, I must admit that I laughed loudly at the direct GoodFellas reference, even though I think I am the only one at my screening who understood the joke. When Joe Pesci first appears, Tommy tells him he’s funny, and quoting the line that Pesci himself famously improvised in GoodFellas, Joe retorts, “Funny how?”

As much as I love musicals, I never had an opportunity to see Jersey Boys on stage, and I cannot speak to the accuracy of the adaptation. It is risky to create a musical based on preexisting songs, but Jersey Boys pulls it off well by inserting the songs in the story at the point which they were created. Thus it dramatizes a story that already exists, highlighting key moments with musical numbers. That is a much wiser approach than trying to paste fragments of a story onto songs that do not work with that story as the colossal train wreck Mamma Mia did.

At my screening, the fairly large audience of septuagenarians gave it an enthusiastic ovation, and I expect fans of The Four Season will share their sentiment. Due to a few obvious flaws, mostly predictability and heavy-handedness, I could not bring myself to participate in that applause, but I did think the film was a decent musical which I would not discourage anyone from seeing.

 

Content Advisory: Rough language throughout, some profanity, an off-screen encounter, a fleeting anti-clerical jab, and scenes of family discord.                              MPAA rating: R

Suggested Audience: Adults.

Personal Recommendation: B-