A New Face For A New Age: Musical Remake Is Born!

Rating: 9/10 (5 October 2018)

Robbie K with the latest review on another holiday remake, this one hoping to bring the emotional punch that drama lovers well... love. Tonight two acting/singing icons are ready to lead the way, with plenty of reviews already praising the two in making this movie come to life. Is it worth the hype, or have we been tricked by another Hollywood stunt? Robbie K here to help guide your viewing pleasures, so let's get started on my review of:
Movie: A Star Is Born (2018)
Director:
Bradley Cooper
Writers:
Eric Roth (screenplay by), Bradley Cooper (screenplay by)
Stars:
Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, Sam Elliott
LIKES:
The Acting: Hands down, the two leading characters have amazing chemistry together. Gaga's mature optimism but realistic grounding craft a strong character ready to brave the storm of drama to come. She brings the joy and energy to the film to help you get through the dark components of this film. Bradley Cooper on the other reprises his role of the sultry, depressed like, hero, who is easy on the eyes of the females in my audience and brings a sort of romanticism charm as well. Together, the duo tango in an amazing, dynamic dance of emotion that so many will grip on to.
Decent Pace: Another prime example of a drama being heartfelt, but also not crawling like so many of these movies do. The first hour was over in an instant, and the second act, while not as fast, managed to keep a good run as they maneuvered through all the quirks. It led to my interest being kept for the movie and able to handle the predictable plot.
The Story: The tale from the original is mostly there in a modernized form, reskinning the tale to have much more sex appeal than the original. Although not quite the same setting, the story still comes out strong, crammed to bursting with plenty of life aspects and lessons to hopefully resonate with the audience's journey. It's got a realistic pulse to it, which should charm many of the intended group, and keeps you enraptured as you live their lives through the screen.
The Music: By far, the biggest and best component of this film for me was the music. Like all my fellow reviewers, the magic of this motion picture score is the heart and soul of the characters' feelings. These poetic displays of artistry fill much of the screen time, some in the concert fashion, others as the fuel for a montage, it brings the full-on bite and drives home the emotion of this film. As an additional bonus, you'll get a mixture of styles though it is limited to country or pop, but still a little variety is better than none right?
DISLIKES:
Same Country Song: While not too overplayed, Cooper's contributions to the music fest were not the most dynamic, choosing to play the same song four times and adding little with each replay. True, I'm not a big fan of country, but in regards to soundtracks, I might try to pull a mamma mia and sample the music to boost soundtrack sales.
A Few Slow Parts: Scraping the bottom of the barrel for dislikes, there are a few slow parts that made me tired just watching. These moments were often prelude to another montage to buy some time, certainly a good trick to get you prepped, but maybe not the best in terms of pacing.
The Few Unnecessary Shots: While much of the movie is spot on and necessary for the story, there are those moments that are merely for show to get things hot. A Star Is Born had a few scenes that were meant to add to the story, but were grazed by as sort of a footnote to not be forgotten. Sure it works with the new paint job this modernized version brought, and it had a few people hot under the collar, but for this guy, it just added fluff I didn't need for the story.
Predictable: There are a few surprises to be thrown in, but for the most part this movie isn't too surprising or twist filled like I like to see. Not much I can say here, but don't expect too much deviation from the tale.
The Okayish Character Development: I'm not saying that this is weak by any means, but I'm saying compared to the original, I feel the story/character component is not quite as strong as the classic. The new face of this story is all about the sex appeal and the music and while they did this fantastically, I feel that there was more potential to dive into these characters. Key tensions are there, and you have enough of the background story to get the gist, but I still think the art of storytelling holds the strongest in the ways of old.

The VERDICT:
Did a Star is Born live up to the hype that reviewers and commercials built up? The answer is yes for the most part. The acting and music are perfect representations of this dynamic love story, capable of wooing you TGIT drama lovers and modern-day romanticists. Still, I think I like the original from what I remember and feel that the cool new look will appeal to the modern-day audiences more than anything else. Still, I had a good time with this movie and was very pleased at how much I liked the movie given my doubts from the trailers. So I would say this is the film for this weekend to check out, and have fun with the soundtrack if you so decide to do it.
My scores are:
Drama/Music/Romance: 8.5
Movie Overall: 8.0