BEFORE: This is a film that's been on my list for a long time, I'd guess at least two years, possibly more. But it's filled with actors that haven't been in many movies, so linking to it and away from it have proven impossible until now, when I finally developed enough of a chain to have two other movies with Christopher Walken, so I could sandwich this one in between them.
THE PLOT: The story of four young men from the wrong side of the tracks in New Jersey who came together to form the iconic 1960's rock group The Four Seasons.
AFTER: There's a fair amount of talking to the audience, or "breaking the fourth wall", here, each of the band members does it at different times, but first we hear from Tommy, who tells the audience that if you grew up in New Jersey, there were only three ways off the streets - to join the army, join a gang or become famous. I've got a big problem with this, because I really doubt that's true. You also hear this from a lot of NBA or NFL players, when they look back on their childhood they'll say something like "Where I grew up, you either joined a basketball team or you joined a gang." Really? This sounds more like someone trying to justify their lifestyle choices, and it seems like an over-simplification of how a person could get from here to there. A person's life is rarely that simple, I think.
There are probably many ways to get off the streets. How about studying hard and getting a scholarship, why wasn't that an option? What about getting a job sweeping floors in a store, and working one's way up to stock-boy or even cashier? What about memorizing the Presidents and state capitals and trying out for Jeopardy's Teen Week? I'm not saying all of these things are likely to happen, but they represent other ways off the streets, alternatives to sports and gangs. Besides, what if an impressionable teen misreads the message and thinks, "Well, I'm short and I can't shoot a basketball very well, so I guess I'd better join a gang, since there are apparently only two ways to get off the streets..." It's a bit like saying that if you're hungry, you can only eat breakfast, there's no lunch or dinner or brunch or dessert, which would be ridiculous.
The breaking of the fourth wall, of course, exists here because this film is based on the long-running Broadway play of the same name, and in a play, the characters would do a great deal of talking to the audience. We're living in an incredible time, where there's a lot of symbiosis between Broadway and Hollywood, tons of plays have become recent hit movies ("Mamma Mia!", "Fences", "Les Miserables", "Rock of Ages", "Sweeney Todd") and it seems like just as many movies are now hits on Broadway ("King Kong", "Mean Girls", "Frozen", "School of Rock", "Groundhog Day", "Waitress" and so on...) And it used to be that they had to wait for a Broadway run to be OVER before turning a play into a movie, but these days it seems they can even run concurrently and one won't damage the business of the other.
(How long before "Hamilton" is a movie, and what's taking so long with the "Cats" movie? Just wondering.)
But apparently the breaking of the fourth wall in the stage version of "Jersey Boys" serves a greater structural purpose, as the play is divided into four sections (or "seasons"), called Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter (however did they come up with this?) and a different member of the group narrates each season - Tommy DeVito in Spring, Bob Gaudio in Summer, Nick Massi in Fall and Frankie Valli in Winter. Collectively there are four different takes on the group, and damn, that's a bit of clever - I might even consider seeing the show (now running off-Broadway) to see how that all plays out. But the movie doesn't really make this clear, or enforce this structure, and the talking to the camera is drastically reduced, so that it nearly feels out of place when it does happen. You can't have actors playing their parts 90% of the time and then talking to camera just 10% of the time, that doesn't work. If that's the bit, you've got to commit to it, "Deadpool"-style, just to make it viable, or else when it does happen, then it's going to take the audience out of the picture, and that works against the suspension of disbelief - suddenly I'll be aware that I'm watching a film with actors saying things, and that's going to break the illusion.
I know that music biopics are hot again, what with "Bohemian Rhapsody" and yet another remake of "A Star Is Born", meanwhile Broadway is giving us a musical based on the life and songs of Carole King, and a new one featuring three actresses playing Cher at different stages in her career. (Why they didn't title this musical "Cher and Cher Alike", I can't quite figure out...) But since I've watched over 50 documentaries about rock and pop music already this year, I'm totally burned out on this topic. So forgive me if I find a band's petty infighting, plus depictions of the party lifestyle destroying the band as all too familiar, not to mention the problems of signing a bad contract, having problems collecting royalties and paying taxes, and life on the road. Boring, I've seen all this before, and even though the Four Seasons pre-dated most of those other bands, it's clear that musicians never learn, and they all end up making the same mistakes. OK, so the Four Seasons maybe had their little unique pocket, the bridge between doo-wop music and rock and roll, but that doesn't mean I'm a big fan of their music, I'm just not.
I honestly knew very little about Franki Valli and the Four Seasons going in to this, but I guess I was willing to learn. That being said, I can believe that the name of the band came from the name of a bowling alley, but if the depiction here of how they came up with the title of the song "Big Girls Don't Cry" is at all accurate, I'll eat my hat. That's just now how songwriting works.
And now I know why I had such a hard time linking to this film, because instead of casting actors known for being in movies, they retained the stage play feel here by casting actors directly from the stage production.
The character of Joey in this story (with no last name given) is based on Joe Pesci, who in real life introduced Bob Gaudio to the other three musicians, thus forming the Four Seasons. Pesci did this when he was 16 years old, then he later played guitar in several bands, including Joey Dee and the Starlighters, where was replaced by (get this...) Jimi Hendrix. Weird, huh?
One of the last scenes in this film was a depiction of the four original members of the band being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and having seen this as the coda to a fair number of rock documentaries, this sort of felt like a narrative cop-out.
But hey, Frankie Valli's still with us, probably one of the only 1950's music stars still hanging around, I think maybe now it's just down to him and Little Richard, since Fats Domino died a couple years ago. Wait, Jerry Lee Lewis is still alive, too? How is that possible?
Also starring John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, Michael Lomenda, Vincent Piazza, Renée Marino, Kathrine Narducci (last seen in "Miracle on 34th Street"), Lou Volpe, Mike Doyle (last seen in "Rabbit Hole"), Freya Tingley, Elizabeth Hunter, Grace Kelley, Rob Marnell, Johnny Cannizzaro (last seen in "The Muppets"), Donnie Kehr, Jeremy Luke (last seen in "Don Jon"), Joey Russo, James Madio, Erica Piccininni, Steve Schirripa (last seen in "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas"), Barry Livingston (last seen in "War Dogs"), Miles Aubrey, Kim Gatewood, Jackie Seiden, Kyli Rae, Troy Grant, Heather Ferguson Pond, John Griffin, Chaz Langley, Billy Gardell, Francesca Eastwood (last seen in "True Crime"), Michael Patrick McGill (last seen in "Danny Collins"), Louis Lombardi (last seen in "Wonderland"), Sean Whalen.
RATING: 4 out of 10 hotel towels
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