Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Ugh, Jersey Boys

This just caps off a really bad week in film for me. Jersey Boys. Clint Eastwood's mediocre attempt at putting to film a Broadway hit musical. What a waste of time... two hours and fourteen minutes of just blahhhh. What went so horribly wrong?
Well let's start by recognizing that Clint Eastwood's only serious brush with the musical genre before this was... Paint Your Wagon...

Fun Fact: Did you know that Paint Your Wagon almost single handedly killed film musicals? True story. That movie was considered such a flop, that executives actually stopped making the genre altogether.
Jump forward forty five year, and somehow Clint Eastwood gets it in his head he's gonna make another musical... this time as director... with no prior experience directing the genre. What happens next? A massive collection of unnecessary dolly shots, bad lip synching, and some of the worst editing I've seen in the last ten years. Even the actors didn't seem to know what was going on and the bad aging makeup definitely didn't help their cause. Indeed, Clint Eastwood was not supposed to return to this genre. And anyone who thought this would be a good idea... the executives who gave the green light, should probably consider retiring.
Even if it's not considered a flop, Jersey Boys should go down as an epic failure in cinematic history. It's that bad a misstep.

No comments:

Post a Comment