Jersey Boys is a Clint Eastwood-directed adaptation of a Broadway musical based on the life of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. I'll let that sink in for a second. Eastwood and a musical adaptation. I had to see it just out of curiosity.
If you're expecting Jersey Boys to be your usual musical-style film, prepare for disappointment. Eastwood's treatment of the story takes the basis of the "Jersey Boys" story and adapts it for film. Instead of moving from one song and dance to another, there's song performances of the Four Seasons' biggest hits interspersed with the group's history. The film follows Frankie Valli and friends Tommy and Michael through their New Jersey neighborhood as they attempt to put together a successful enough band to escape their mob-infused lifestyle. The addition of Bob Gaudio, a singer-songerwriter guru, completes the package and helps them get their first record deal "“ after some hijinks.
For the most part, the story is pretty chronological, yet the story still feels a bit disjointed. Characters start the film and seem to begin to become fairly well developed, but as the group experiences success, the characters devolve and lose their individual characteristics that made them interesting "“ Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen) is no longer such a maestro, Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) isn't such a grifter, and Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) isn't quite such a lost puppy. The shift from such an interesting historical character piece to almost hero worship of Frankie Valli kind of ruins the experience.
One of the most interesting decisions made by Eastwood was having the three bandmates occasionally act as narrators at various points in the film. This breaking of the fourth wall helps to propel the storyline along more quickly and in a more interesting manner than having something written across the bottom of the screen. While it could have easily been overused, Eastwood used it just enough to help the story without becoming annoying.
The ending of the film is pretty abrupt. The story fastwards quickly from Frankie in the '70s to the group's reunion at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. There's really no good explanation of what happens to them in the meantime.
Overall, this is a decent retelling of specific sections of history, but there are some obvious gaps, and there are also some issues with how the story is told. Despite these, the performances overall are fantastic. Many of the actors in the film are the originals from the Broadway musical, and they are obviously very familiar with the material. The original Frank Valli and the Four Seasons songs use the original voice tracks, but the songs from the musical are performed by the actors live. Pretty impressive.
