Jersey Boys

The hit 2005 Broadway musical Jersey Boys makes a disappointing transition to the big screen in this film directed by Clint Eastwood. Both versions dramatize the little-known story of the ‘60s pop group Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons: their origins on the mean streets of Newark, the ups and downs of their career as the biggest pre-Beatles rock band, and their eventual break-up and aftermath. Screenwriters Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (who wrote the book for the musical) carry over the multiple-narrator approach they use in the stage version but drop the Rashomon-esque quality that made this direct addressing of the audience relevant and inspired. The show is structured in four acts of equal length that tell a chronologically coherent story from the differing perspectives of each band member. This effective device is only retained on a cursory level in the movie, which has each character break the forth wall and talk to the camera, but only for the purpose of moving the story forward in a banal and uncinematic way. Without the “four seasons” structure and contrasting perspectives on the history of the group, this narration becomes just another of the tiresome biopic clichés that the film wallows in.

For the stage, Brickman and Elice created a unique and historically significant show that stood out from the countless disposable jukebox musicals that were polluting Broadway in the years that preceded it. Their screenplay adaptation, however, is as generic and uninspired as most other tiresome behind-the-music docudramas. The selection of director doesn’t help matters. Eastwood’s lackadaisical, Old-Hollywood approach to filmmaking is totally wrong for this street-savvy, rock 'n roll narrative.  Under his direction, this tale of Italian American tuffs who transform themselves into a clean-cut, Middle American pop group only to be undone by gambling, sexual competition, and misplaced loyalties results in a film that feels like an amateur musical production of Goodfellas staged at a nursing home. Jersey Boys isn’t as unwatchable as Eastwood’s previous film J. Edgar (another insufferable biopic). The later film has in its favor all the wonderful Four Seasons songs and actor John Lloyd Young (who won the Tony Award for the Broadway version). He has a beautiful voice that recalls Valli’s without being a simple impression of him. But audiences would do better just buying a best of the Four Seasons compilation and listening to the genuine article.