Review of A Star Is Born (2018) by Christian Todd B — 06 Oct 2018

It's amazing what hype can do. It got me to the theatre, and it kept me through the entire movie (which in retrospect, leaving at about 45 minutes would have been fine because that's exactly where I realized I was not watching a good movie) but that's as far as I'll go on its ride of hype.

This is certainly not a directorial break through. If anything A Star is Born is a display of -stick to acting. There is no depth or a newly realized version here AT ALL. The film relies on the audience to fill in the pieces of truly developed characters, and a relationship that is supposed to be romantic.

Something has to actually happen for romance to be believable- rule one of being a director and an actor. Even the kissing and some slight very brushed over intimate moments, one involving a cupcake, seem forced and more like watching porn actors act then they seemed like moments that were pushing along this relationship, and making for necessary filmmaking.

We see them singing together in a parking lot while he's drunk off his ass the first night they're together, which at the most could have been at the two hour mark together; maybe three. She punches a guy in the face just prior because a guy wanted a picture of him and she was defending Jackson- that's his name- that same night.

Really? What? What was her deal with people taking his picture? It was a characteristic that came up shortly after while buying frozen pees for her potentially swelling hand. What does she have against the little people wanting a celebrity's picture? Made no sense since she was a little person, and if anything this focus on her not wanting others to take his picture when she didn't even know him yet was a window into the fact that the movie was just searching and really didn't know what it was searching for.

The chemistry the reviews are talking about is pure projection because as I observed, there wasn't one natural moment or any real passion between them. The most realistic moments were two where Lady Gaga flubbed her lines and it was kept in (bathtub and breakfast); most likely because they were aware the sense of realness was far and few between and flubbing your lines does bring a real moment, even if it is breaking character, but hence her thin vapid performance, and lack of depth going on, they took what they could get.

The fact that this is better reviewed then Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson is just plain silly. The music in that version is superior, as well as the acting, because those are two real actors.

The premise no matter how you slice it is silly and doesn't hold up in the 70's really, as it certainly doesn't now- but Barbra definitely pulls it off better. Lady Gaga seemed to be trying to dumb herself down to seem real with the action of the film, and her relationship with a man, but that didn't work to make her believable and really isn't acting, and strangely the whole production dwarfed her, where like Liza Minnelli in Cabaret was huge and an amazing performance and bigger than life and should have literally been that for Lady Gaga- a true A Star is Born moment.

.. Lady Gaga seems like a student-actress in over her head in an acting class in college in Minnesota with a ton more classes that the is juggling- Dance and Political Science. She is not an actress, or if she wants to be, she needs a lot of lessons; but there is not any sign of natural talent.

Bradley Cooper's performance was ridiculous. That would sum it all up really. The movie is- ridiculous. And in light of it attempting to pull at our heartstrings with addiction almost seemed an insult to the plight of an addict.

It wasn't' realized, or really worked out. Oh yeah, and wtf was Dave Chappelle doing? And SNL seemed not like SNL and a definitive moment of dwarking Lady Gaga... If seems bigger on SNL in real life then in a movie on SNL I think that's a problem.

And Alec Baldwin? And the Grammy's! All of it seemed not real.