Aubrey MaloneA tale excellently acted and directed
Jersey Boys (15A)
He had ambitions to become bigger than his idol Frank Sinatra – even without having to stand on a chair. Well he didn’t quite achieve that but after ‘Sherry’ catapulted Frankie Valli and his rock band The Four Seasons into the big time, his falsetto style of singing became an endemic part of the cultural landscape. (It was so distinctive it even seemed to prefigure the Bee Gees)..
This highly entertaining biopic focuses on his meteoric rise to fame after some early struggles, and the perhaps inevitable toll this exacts on his family life – in particular his wife Mary (Renee Marino) who develops a drinking problem lbecause of his increased absence from her on the road, and also his daughter Francine (Freya Tingley) who falls into bad company for the same reason.
There are also money problems, most of these caused by the shady Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) who discovers Valli but then becomes involved with the Mafia and a host of tax and gambling quagmires.
Directed by, of all people, Clint Eastwood, the film zaps along at a frenetic pace and rarely flags over its 134 minutes running time. It’s laced with many of Valli’s very catchy songs (‘Oh What a Night’, ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’, etc.) like the hit Broadway musical on which it’s based.
Song and dance
Perhaps the idea of the characters talking directly to the audience worked better there than here but this is a very small caveat with a film that’s like a slice of Americana in its chronicle of the life of a man with gold in his throat who, like so many musical icons, seemed to show more loyalty to his fellow band members than he did to his family after he hit payday.
If we wish we can see the film as a cautionary fable about the perils of life at the top of the showbusiness tree but unlike the usual ‘price of fame’ homilies (like, say, the recent Ray or Walk the Line) it ends happily.
Don’t leave the cinema, by the way, before the final credits have stopped rolling as there’s a brilliant song-and-dance routine at the end that will have you clapping your hands and tapping your feet – if not dancing in the aisles as I believe happened in some venues for the stage version of it.
It’s excellently directed and acted. There’s some sexual content and a lot of, let us say, ‘colourful’ language but it’s still much tamer than many films with 15A certs. Christopher Walken, looking as pale as a ghost and much older than his 71 years, does his by now almost mandatory ‘godfather’ role.
John Lloyd Young as Valli, on the contrary, lives up to his surname, even at the end where himself and his band are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. This segment makes only a token attempt to show him at his real age of 56. (Some grey hair but no real change to that boyish face.)
I also wonder if his character wasn’t whitewashed to an extent in the movie, considering he’s still alive – and indeed its executive producer.
Next up perhaps he should appear in a biography of the 1940s noir star Richard Conte – he’s a dead ringer for him.
**** Excellent