Review of A Star Is Born (2018) by Redbeardo — 17 Oct 2018

Shockingly self-indulgent and flat for all the praise it’s received. All the air seeps out after the first 15 minutes, and then it’s just two hours of watching the same beats over and over: Jackson promises to stop drinking, Ally belts out another forgettable song, Jackson falls off the wagon, Ally gets upset, they fight, repeat.

Over and over and over. At first Ally has charm and charisma but soon enough turns into a vapid, one-note pop star with ugly day-glo hair. Inexplicably, Jackson mumbles throughout in a deep raspy vocal register but always sings in a tenor’s octave with choirboy diction.

Ultimately the problem is Cooper’s love for his own unedited close-ups. He’s flipped the story’s dynamics so that he’s the star here, not the ascending starlet as in previous versions. And he’s simply not as fascinating as Cooper thinks he is.

Never expected to find the cringeworthy Streisand version superior, but it is in just about every way. Her narcissism may be equal to Cooper’s, but at least the scenes in that version went somewhere, the dialogue wasn’t as banal and a handful of the tunes were hummable.