Review of Crazy Heart (2009) by Jesse O — 29 Nov 2010

It sucks having to write this review after finding out that Leslie Nielsen has passed away. He actually was a huge part of my childhood in the sense that the Naked Gun trilogy were some of the funniest movies I saw as a kid and they're still movies that I watch nowadays and still laugh uproariously at the silly humor and Leslie Nielsen was usually at the center of it. The thing with Leslie was that he always tried to play the straight man in this increasingly absurd world and it just worked like a charm in Airplane AND in the Naked Gun trilogy. I've been a fan of his to THIS day. It doesn't matter WHAT he was in, if he was in it I'd at least be entertained and I'd laugh at any scene he was in, that were intended for comedic purposes of course. I mentioned to my aunt a month or two ago that if Betty White was getting her comeback, then Leslie Nielsen should get his. Unfortunately it seems we're not going to get it due to his unfortunate passing. Granted he was 84 years old so I'm sure he had a great life and he managed to entertain millions of people around the world, which is far more than most of us will ever achieve. So R.I.P Mr. Nielsen, you will be sorely missed.

So now onto this Crazy Heart "review". It's mostly going to take the form of a rant because while this movie is good, it's insanely overrated and while Jeff Bridges gives a fantastic performance it wasn't really that Oscar-worthy. The reason why I'm going to rant about this movie is because it reminds me of a movie that came out a year prior to this movie's release. And that movie is The Wrestler. Both movies essentially tell the same story. An out of his luck country singer/professional wrestler tries to fix his life while at the same time making a comeback. It's actually a movie you see a lot of, so that's not the problem. The problem is that the major plot points are almost all exactly the same as in The Wrestler. Even placed in the same order too and that's just eerie. I'm not saying this movie ripped off The Wrestler because like I mentioned, this type of movie has been done a lot of times. Personally I thought The Wrestler was the better movie, let me just get that out of the way right now. I'm not trying to shit on this movie, as I enjoyed it, but to say that Jeff Bridges won the award for the same role that Mickey Rourke did the previous year (he lost out to Sean Penn...whose performance in Milk was overrated), and did it far better at that, is kind bullshit. Don't get me wrong Jeff Bridges is a great performer and like I said he's great here, but he seriously only got that Oscar because of all the great performances in his career. Sort of like Martin Scorsese finally got his Oscar for best director in 2007 after a 30 year career. He only got that because it was the Academy's way of recognizing 30 years of great movies. And Martin DID deserve that Oscar if you were giving it to him for his career. He may have done the best job directing that year, quite frankly I don't remember the other nominees that year. So I think that Jeff Bridges got basically the Martin Scorsese treatment. He got the award because of his great career, not because his performance was the best performance of any actor last year. The thing with Jeff's performance is that I didn't see any scene that made me think "Fuck...this performance is amazing, he deserves that Oscar"...there's no standout scenes where you're like "Fuck...this is one fantastic performance". I never felt that AT all. And not to mention, the movie's not great. And to me a best actor award isn't just a great performance. Because what if Jeff Bridges was still in this movie, but the budget was 5000 dollars and you had a lot of unexperienced actors, would he still get the award? I don't think so. Jeff's performance alone doesn't SAVE the movie. An actor worthy of the award should be the one who carries his movie past the level of excellency. Mickey Rourke did that, Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood did that. Jeff Bridges doesn't do that in this movie. And it's not his fault to be completely honest with you because the material in this movie has to be some of the most cliche stuff I've ever seen. I had figured out the movie right from the VERY beginning. I don't have a problem with cliched stories if the movie ends up being great. For example Whip It was an AWESOME movie despite it's cliched storyline. Yet this movie just NEVER manages to overcome that. I predicted he would have an accident, I predicted that he would end up fucking it up with his girlfriend, I predicted that he would go back to doing what he loved. All of which were true, and I figured this out right at the very beginning. So I mean the movie had the chance to overcome all its cliches but it didn't. And it's a shame because this story is very common but it can be very effective if done right (like in The Wrestler). Another thing, while Jeff has a great voice for this kind of performance as a country musician. If this were an alternate universe and I didn't know who Jeff was and I was asked if I thought this guy was a country star, I'd wholeheartedly say no. In The Wrestler, same thing applies but Mickey looks and plays the part so well that I'd say 'yes, he looks like a wrestler' if this were an alternate universe where I did not know who Mickey was. Part of it is that in The Wrestler, that story was so close and personal to Mickey's own experience as an actor, then a boxer then trying to get back into acting after much ridicule, that it just added a hint of reality that was REALLY needed in that movie. It just feels like an actor delivering lines in this movie. And again I'm sorry to shit on this movie because Jeff was great but I never suspended my disbelief and pretended that this guy was actually a country music star. But hey, the songs in this movie are AWESOME. If I liked country I'd totally buy the soundtrack. And the story is good, Jeff's and Maggie's scenes are the highlight of the movie. In fact I'm gonna say this right now Maggie's performance was more worthy of an Oscar (supporting actress at least) than Jeff as a leading man. Fuck I'm sort of shitting on Jeff Bridges aren't I? I don't mean to do that, again I'm a big fan of his work but while his performance is great it's just never enough to raise the movie above just being a good solid movie. Watch this movie if you must. It's not great or anything, but you could be watching Transformers 2...and no movie is worse than Transformers 2.