Review of Jersey Boys (2014) by Dawdlingpoet — 28 Nov 2021

Jersey Boys is a musical based drama with biographical elements to it. It features themes including camerarderie, determination (to succeed) greed and extortion. Its fair to say that it portrays a typical American dream-esque rags to riches story, although it is at least loosely based on a true story in this case.

The first thing I noticed about this film was that the characters seemed to be relatively optimistic and light hearted while the film had a very dark and bleak tone, in terms of the setting and the lighting, with many scenes taking place at night. I thought it looked visually almost drained of colour, which I imagine was done to try and put across the bleakness of the area (economically and otherwse) at the time.

Given the bleak appearance, I was taken aback by just how high pitched and uplifting their music sounded, although I shouldn't have been as I'm familiar with The Four Sesasons better known tracks. There was definitely a dichtomy feel to the film. Some of the plot twists took me by surprise but then I'll admit I didn't know much about the background to the group prior to watching the film, although I had been interested in finding out more obviously. There is a fair amount of drama present in the plot, with different characters being sent to jail and dealing with other tough circumstances. The first recognisable cast member I specifically noticed was Christopher Walken, who plays Gyp DeCarlo, a captain of the local (New Jersey) branch of the Genovese family, linked to the Mafia. Other cast members include Vincent Piazza, who plays Tommy DeVito (a fast speaking wise-guy type), Michael Lomenda as Nick Massi, Johnny Cannizzaro as Nick DeVito and John Lloyd Young as Frankie Valli. Their performances were quite good, they certainly sounded the part, as late teens or men of italian descent in their 20s in the late 50s in New Jersey. Of course this means that there are some moderately thick New Jersey and Italian laced accents present, which were slightly hard to follow at times. I felt that the audio levels weren't ideal in some scenes, with people talking over other people I struggled to fully follow all that was being said, which was frustrating, although it isn't an issue for the full duration of the film.

Some scenes feature characters narrating what was going on at the time, while directly staring at the viewer . I imagine this is what happens in the official musical - I quite liked it, as I felt it helped to make you (i.e. the viewer) feel more clued in to how characters felt and what was on their mind at the time. It also makes the film have a more casual feel to it.

I thought this was a relatively entertaining film overall, with decent performances and obviously numerous good musical performances present throughout the plot. Of course it has its fair share of cheese, which is very much to be expected of this genre and plot. I think that as the plot continued, I slowly became more keen on the mix of uplifting musical numbers and the bleak backdrop - I'd like to think it sends out a good message to people although how realistic it is, im not sure of. This sort of film is mostly watched and enjoyed as a bit of fun though and as that it does relatively well.

Content wise, this film contains little in the way of sex scenes, although there is a reference clearly hinting that one character had been in bed with a woman, though their not shown in bed together. There is violence present, although its mostly mild in tone, with only one scene clearly showing a bloody injury but it isn't especially graphic as such. There is, however, frequent use of strong language and offensive or otherwise racically discriminatory language, which reflects the cultural prejudices of the time the film is set in. There are also drug references, although the film doesn't actively glamorise the taking of recreational drugs, if anything it highlights the risks it can bring. The film carries a 15 rating to reflect the bleak tone of the plot overall and the content just mentioned. If anything, I was slightly surprised it wasn't given the lower 12 rating but I imagine thats because of the racially discrimantory language used.

I think that, overall, I'd say this was an ok film - it was pretty watchable, it mostly entertained me and has a good cast and interesting use of narration, plus obviously with an interesting plot. On the other hand, it was a little long winded, with a total running time of 2 hours and 10 minutes and I found it frustrating trying to entirely follow the dialogue in some scenes, when the audio levels didn't sound great (how ironic is that given its a musical film?). Plus some scenes seemed to go on a bit too long and I wasn't sure they were entirely necessary, so I suppose that, all in all, I'd go for a 5 out of 10 rating for this film, as I mostly enjoyed it but I recognise there are a fair few issues and it may be a bit long and hard to fully follow for some.