Initial Reaction as a Gaga Fan

Rating: Null/10 (12 October 2018)

I'm a big fan of Lady Gaga, and with this movie there is no doubt that she is not only a technically incredible musician, but a human being who puts so much emotion and soul into song that it's impossible not to break your heart. My favorite parts of "A Star Is Born" are the performances where she absolutely gives it her all and bares her soul. The scene where she and Cooper sing "Shallow" is so well done and has so much momentum- it has the great set up of him surprising her with a love arrangement of a song she wrote and sang him. Bradley Cooper did a great job handling this scene, too, it's all a little haphazard and dazed, the lights of the show changing colors on Ally's awestruck face. It had a great effect of putting you in the moment and making it feel alive, which is the same effect it has for Jackson, Cooper's character, it makes him feel alive for the first time in a long time. Then there is the final song "I'll Never Love Again", sung by Ally after Jackson's suicide but written by Jackson shortly before he died. This is another beautiful sequence as Gaga absolutely bares every emotion she has left in her body, then the scene switches to the delicate moment when Jackson first played the song for Ally. The whole ending of this movie will bring you to tears regardless of your thoughts on the rest of it. The acting here is impeccable and at the very least Oscar-nomination worthy. When Jennifer Hudson won for "Dreamgirls" in 2006, some criticized the win saying that it was just good singing. But when the singing is truly that good, how can you not reward it? I feel like we may have a similar case here with Gaga, she's great and convincing in the dramatic dialogue scenes, but it's the songs that sell her performance. She's not just singing, she's acting with the entirety of her being.
Whew. Despite all that, I found the storytelling to ring false in some key places for me.
I couldn't quite buy the love story. I had a hard time believing that Ally would have no reservations about being with and eventually marrying someone who she knows is a major alcoholic, especially when we're introduced to her as a rational, no-nonsense kind of girl who lays down the line in her home, cleaning up after her wacky father and even telling him that she doesn't want to get involved with Jackson because "he's a drunk". This is disregarded as they fall deeply in love with each other. I would think Jackson's alcoholism would be a hesitation or at least a struggle for Ally in falling for him, but it's all a big romance in the beginning. I could also understand how Ally might fall so hard that rationality goes out the window for this man, but we didn't really see any disregarding of her reservations, it was just like all of a sudden there were none.
The other major oversight on the character of Ally I felt was the course of her rise to fame. First of all, in the world of this film, which seems to be present day, I didn't believe that the world would suddenly want to see a girl who initially got recognition for singing her heart out at a concert with Jackson Maine as a generic pop star. I would think people would want to see more of the brown-haired girl who bares her soul at a piano. But more importantly, on a character level, I couldn't figure out what Ally thought of this re-invention herself. At one point, when her manager has her train to do a cheesy dance routine, she tells him that she doesn't want to lose the part of herself that has real talent. But then we're told that the ridiculous orange hair was Ally's idea, and she even tells Jackson that she thought a performance she did with it, to a dance-y disposable song, "rocked"- and of course she vehemently defends her lyric "why you come around me with an ass like that" in the bathtub confrontation scene. I felt this abrupt a shift in Ally's image and music warranted more of a closer look at why Ally herself was allowing this or wanted this. During the scene where Jackson confronts Ally about her ridiculous music while she's in the bathtub, before calling her ugly, he says something like "you thought you were ugly and you're not ugly and now you want everyone's approval." This was a great, telling line. That would be a reason why Ally might want to be a sexy pop star, her insecurities. But we never quite know if that's the case from Ally herself and she is shown to have both reservations about her career and comfort in it. Ally strikes you in the beginning as all-natural in her music and someone who would fight against anyone trying to make her disingenuine. So is she being pushed around and preyed on by label execs and succumbing under the pressure? Is she herself determined to be this sex symbol with dorky, albeit hit songs to defy her insecurities once and for all? These songs are clearly meant to be shallow and near-parody of bad modern pop compared to the soul-baring ballads of the film. Why wouldn't she fight against that? Or if she likes it, and wants it, then why? I felt her perspective here was crucial and missing!
The last part of the film I had a problem with was Jackson's suicide. We saw that Jackson was an alcoholic, but his reveal at one point in the movie when he's in rehab that he tried to kill himself at age 12 came as a shock to me. It didn't immediately make sense to me why he had been suicidal all his life. I didn't think his character or backstory was fleshed out enough for him abruptly committing suicide after being newly sober and reuniting happily with his wife to make sense, so it struck me as overly melodramatic. It would have probably made more sense to me if he'd simply turned back to drinking or drugs after Ally's manager's triggering berating of him. But his apparent lifelong suicidal ideation was introduced late in the movie and to me, felt too fuzzy and not delved-into-enough for his death by his own hand to make sense other than for melodramatic effect, which is cheap, even if it's followed by a knockout Gaga performance.
I am in the minority here and I am disappointed that I am. I do believe there are some great elements to this movie, namely a few songs and Gaga's emotional singing and acting. I ultimately just couldn't believe the story.