Jersey Boys movie looking at a weak 12 million opening - Page 5

[Broadway Baby8]

Posted: 7/6/14 at 10:41am

Saw the movie yesterday. Went in with low expectations (loved the show on Broadway), but was pleasantly surprised. Thought it was a terrific adaptation of the stage show. Enjoyed it and recommend it!

[forgetmenotnyc]

Posted: 7/9/14 at 7:00pm

LUVED LUVED LUVED THIS! PEOPLE WHO WAIT to rent it & see it on their home screens are doing themselves a BIG disservice. Support our medium in theatrical release or be responsible for contributing to it's demise. John L Young is nothing but stellar in this. Way too many bitchy critics out there have taken the edge off this transfer that needs your support.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 7/9/14 at 7:07pm

Saw it last weekend. Didn't love it. Didn't hate it. I just felt Eastwood was the WRONG director for this material. His slow pacing and washed-out color palette were the antithesis of the source and as a result, the film felt anemic by comparison. The songs in context still gave me a rush, but nearly all the book scenes felt flat and disjointed. Personally, I thought Scorsese would have been the ideal director (and I rarely feel that way about Scorsese).

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 7/9/14 at 7:59pm

Sorry to say, it seems the lowered expectations I went in with weren't quite low enough-- thought the movie was pretty dreadful over all, despite respectable performances by most of the cast. Somehow they managed to make a living breathing jukebox stage show into a decidedly lifeless anti-move-musical of a movie. The script didn't depend on any of the musical performances to tell the story-- it was basically a straight play with diegetic song beats thrown in. It seemed even the filmmakers realized their error and tried for a Hail Mary fully staged musical number in the final minutes that only came off like a cheap music video from 1979.

So anemic in its color timing, so poorly lit and shot (who else noticed the cafe scene with snow outside falling on fully-green trees?), so sad to see the powers that be squander one more opportunity to bring a great period musical story to the screen. How many more chances do we get before the studios just throw in the towel on the classic movie musical form altogether?

[mc1227]

Posted: 7/9/14 at 8:40pm

I saw this movie recently and enjoyed some of it but agree that it could have been better. Having grown up in the same areas that this group did, the sets were a disappointment with the exception of where Frankie grew up. That was spot on but perhaps they did shoot the exteriors on that sight. Obviously this point would only mean something to someone who knows the area.

I also believe that for the movie, the original songs should have been used. JYL's voice was way off from the early days of The Broadway show and he did not do a bit of justice to Frankie Vallie in this film . His acting on film left a lot to be desired. Also, each stereotypical character was overdone, i.e. The thug, the guido, the gay guy, etc. Wish it was better but still rather see a mediocre movie based on a play than see another superhero Hollywood movie.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 7/9/14 at 9:11pm

I saw it last week and thought it was one of the most boring films I've ever say through. I love Clint Eastwood as a director but my God, he messed this one up.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 7/9/14 at 10:49pm

So anemic in its color timing, so poorly lit and shot (who else noticed the cafe scene with snow outside falling on fully-green trees?)

I was gonna say, I had never lived in snow until I was in my 30s, and even then I knew that was a pretty bad fake.

Not to mention the backgrounds of the daytime driving scenes.

[Melissa25]

Posted: 7/14/14 at 2:48pm

Saw this yesterday and I am glad that Broadway actors got some work but not really sure what Clint Eastwood was thinking. The characters talking to the camera? WTH? Really not complicated material that needs narration after all.

The cheap scene of the Brill building panning up through the floors and different musical styles was so hokey. I can't believe this was Clint's work. And that MTV ending...??? I was cracking up. Thank God for Christopher Walken who makes everything realistically campy. Glad I saw it but also glad I paid the matinee bargain price.

[haterobics]

Posted: 7/14/14 at 3:00pm

"The characters talking to the camera? WTH? Really not complicated material that needs narration after all."

That is a device lifted directly from the Broadway show...

[canmark]

Posted: 1/6/15 at 6:59pm

Someone got me the Jersey Boys DVD for Christmas and I finally watched it. I have not seen the stage version, but have the OBC CD and have some familiarity with the structure of the show.

Found the first part long and uninteresting, like a poor man’s version of a Martin Scorsese mafia picture that involved petty criminals who liked to sing. It was a full 45 minutes before the group was formed and they don’t sing their first hit (“Sherry”) until the 55 minute mark.

And did they change the order of some of the songs? After the virginal Bob Gaudio hooks up with that woman (was she a hooker?), isn’t he supposed to sing “Oh, what a night?” Instead they use that song in the “encore” and have inappropriate characters like Tommy singing about his first time getting laid.

I did like the singing and performance numbers, and wished there were more of those. Those Four Seasons hits are great. I imagine the stage show offers more in the way of performance and that’s what makes it so popular – there’s no way this film could run 10 years.

And why, at the end, did Frankie reminisce about four guys standing under a street light singing? They never did that. They came together in the studio after Gaudio joined, and then played shows out on the road. When were they singing on sidewalks?

Updated On: 1/6/15 at 06:59 PM

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 1/6/15 at 7:09pm

The "four guys" line is in the show, but it refers to Tommy, Nick Massi, Frankie and Tommy's brother. You're right. The Four Seasons (as portrayed in JB) didn't busk under a street lamp.

Yea, the hotel scene with the hooker was moved into the trio. In the show, Bob sings it as he narrates what led up to losing his virginity.

[Christoph]

Posted: 1/13/15 at 5:04pm

Caught this on On Demand it was as underwhelming and torpid as I feared. I am really surprised that anyone is surprised that Eastwood botched this. I have always felt him to be an overrated director with major pacing issues. I mean his biggie Unforgiven was overlong, overwrought and overpopulated with extraneous characters while treading the same elegiac western path that McCabe and Mrs. Miller tread decades before while everyone pretended that Eastwood found something new. The first half of The Bridges of Madison County is pretty wonderful thanks to Streep's performance, but the sequences with her adult kids are embarrassing and the film all but screeches to an excruciating halt in the latter third. Absolute Power was a fairly entertaining crackerjack read that Eastwood rendered inert onscreen, so he could place himself front and center and reinvigorate tired action cliches. He also elicits a career worst performance from the great Judy Davis in it. And let us now bow our heads and try desperately to forget the horror and shambles he made of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I will always remember a comical film critic from many years ago pondering that Eastwood's next edge-of-your-seat film would be a three-hour epic about a wizened old geezer (played by himself) standing in a front door wrestling with the existential quandary of whether he should open the screen door or not open it and it builds to a pulse-pounding frenzy as the geezer decides...not to open it. But seriously, nothing in his repertoire indicated that he was even a mediocre fit for a musical version of Jersey Boys and the results are the proof in the pudding.