A movie star is born

Rating: 8/10 (6 April 2019)

I had little awareness of Lady Gaga's back catalogue apart from a Tony Bennett album I bought so she was fairly new to me as a personality. Never having watched her before I probably had a big advantage over all her die hard fans and maybe some of the bad reviewers on here but I found her really charismatic, both as a first time actress and as a singer. Bradley Cooper, who I have seen many times on screen is equally as compelling, but he usually is good
and not a bad singer as well. I don't quite know if his guitar playing was genuine or not, very much as Ryan Goslings keyboard work in La La Land is equally mystifying but they certainly acted it convincingly. A Star Is Born is a tragic story and having seen the Janet Gaynor and Judy Garland movies years ago I didn't expect too many laughs. I suspect a lot of the bad reviews on here are by younger viewers who have a short attention span for the sometimes drawn out scenes of anguish but it was all fine with me. I've seen three newish musicals in the past few weeks, The Greatest Showman which I hated, La La Land which I loved and this one. I honestly don't think any of them measure up to the musicals of of the 1930's to 1950's but by today's standards I'll give this and La La Land 8 stars and Hugh Jackman's mess of a film, zero.