Jersey Boys

Though he will always be remembered for his cold and impassive stare, accompanied with a voice as smooth as sandpaper that made the man with no name so memorable in the Dollars Trilogy, Clint Eastwood has undoubtedly built up an admirable career as a director. This biographical-musical-drama is a step out of the ordinary for him, but then again, no great director has built a career around the same format over and over again, so how has the ageing icon fared with his latest release.

Make no mistake, just because this is a musical does not mean it is all happy and upbeat. In fact the musical scenes are the only ones that are consistently up-beat, but I mean that in a good way. It helps that it is about a band, also they can include music despite the fact that the scenes that do not involve music make sense when compared to them. As well as this, there are clear elements of classic Eastwood themes. To explain quickly I’ll describe the opening narration, where Tommy DeVito explains that if it wasn’t for him, he and his friends would be lying in a car trunk with bullets in their heads, rough stuff for a group of swinging sixties singers. We watch s these four boys battle their way out of the New Jersey community to stardom, forming the highly successful Four Seasons group, amid gambling and loan sharks.

So you should be asking yourself, what kind of film is this? Despite my best efforts, I can’t properly explain. I can only register my own opinion of what this film is, and in my opinion it falls in-between music and drama. Regrettably I would struggle to refer to it as a biography, as it is rife with historical inaccuracies and leaves out key facts, like one of the main characters dying just ten years after the point at which the film ends, I really was surprised not to see at least a short paragraph to state what happened to these people next. True, it does tell the story of real people, famous ones at that, but without a great deal of real historical context it feels a bit too dramatized. As well as this there are a few too many clichés and true history makes clichés irrelevant. But in this context it feels like more like a commonly used plot point.

However, that does not make the film bad. To sum this film up in a phrase, as ridiculous as it sounds, it’s ‘What if Martin Scorsese did a musical?’ The story even features Joe Pesci, and the start feels remarkably like a light hearted Goodfellas, it even has the narration to accompany it (and serious fans of the mobster masterpiece will spot a subtle reference later in honour of Pesci’s involvement). There are some great performances as well, Christopher Walken delivering as he always does. As well as this the Four Seasons do feel genuine, maybe not historically, but as characters in a film they are nicely layered. Their friendship and eventual fallout all feel genuine, and either they are very good actors or they genuinely are enjoying portraying this iconic band and that makes it feel real.

The film also has a very impressive look as well. Maybe it’s because we admire the sixties in a nostalgic nature, but the film really is a visual feast. It’s richly coloured and (ironic for Eastwood) contains a smooth sound. As well as the fact that the music is fun and uplifting, contrasting well with the harsh nature of the plot, it is a welcome release of tension. However this may hinder it slightly, on more than one occasion it jumps from serious to singing too quickly to let the emotional impct sik in, or to enjoy to music. It may fail to convince us that these people really existed, but it does offer an appealing take on the slum to success story.

Result 5/10