High Floor; Low Ceiling

Rating: 7/10 (11 October 2018)

After watching this iteration of "A Star Is Born" (I actually had not seen any of the others previously), there's no way I could give it a ranking lower than seven stars. It's too solid of a film, featuring so many great auxiliary things happening, to go any lower. At the same time, however, there's also really no way I would rank it higher than maybe eight stars, either. To me, this was one of those movie experiences where the floor is very high, but the ceiling is relatively low.
For a basic plot summary, "A Star Is Born" tells the romantic tale of Jack (Bradley Cooper) & Ally (Lady Gaga). Jack is an on-the-way-out music star with a drinking problem and a bad case of tinnitus, but when when he chances upon Ally working at a drag bar and is completely enraptured with her voice, the chemistry between the two is immediate. He needs her to keep him out of the bottle, while she needs him to stay true to herself and remember to be confident. The relationship is tested to the brink, however, when Ally's own burgeoning career takes her further and further away from Jack.
Perhaps the most interesting part of this film experience for me was seeing Cooper (also the director) produce a very gritty, down-to-earth, "now-feeling" flick using a concept ripped from the glitz-and-glamour dramas of Hollywood's Golden Era. Cooper takes this simple, relatively straightforward story and perfectly adapts it for these modern times. Jack & Ally are both characters that feel very relatable to the audience, the types one could find carrying on a similar romance even outside the cinema doors. This part of the equation is done perfectly.
Part of the reason why I can't quite call this film a true "great" (pulling the punch just a bit), though, is rooted in that very simplicity. I'm not going to say that every film's plot needs to be twisty or mysterious, but I will say this about "A Star Is Born": I feel like it was more a labor of "let's turn this old story into something updated/better" than anything. An emotional speech from Sam Elliott towards the end of the film really sums this up. While I respect that approach, it just isn't going to vault the movie into my film stratosphere. Hence, the 7/8 star rating is very much subjective to my own personal likings.
I don't want to sell the movie short at all, though, because it does so many things right:
-The music is indeed truly incredible. If you aren't listening to the soundtrack almost immediately after exiting your theater seat, you may not have a soul :)
-The acting is also top-notch. Cooper's performance might be award-worthy, and Gaga is practically just playing herself (which works because she's such an interesting individual even off camera).
-Never once did I find myself bored or disinterested while watching, as Cooper always infuses a sense of energy or forward motion into the proceedings. I also legitimately did not see the ending coming that was given to us.
So, despite perhaps not ranking extraordinarily high on my "Best-Of" lists, there are still a lot of things I will take away from this film, most notably the music and Cooper's performance. As I said in the opener, it's a little odd to see a film with this high a floor have such a potentially low ceiling in contrast.