A Star is Implausible

Rating: 7/10 (18 October 2018)

A good movie that does not justify the hype, but one I would not seek out again - mainly due to its excessive length. Man, this is one baggy movie! Scenes go on, well past their expiry date, and some scenes could just have been dispensed with altogether.
I admit I've become lazy and always have closed captions on at home - without them, I lost huge chunks of dialogue between Cooper and Sam Elliott. I mean, there's gravelly and then there's subterranean.
There's a lot to like about it - good performances from Cooper and GaGa (can we not call her something else?), good music, authentically performed, and a nice look to the thing. However, the plot...
Imagine Eddie Vedder dragging some girl you've never seen before up on stage, duetting with her then giving her a showcase for her own songs in the middle of a Pearl Jam gig. You'd love her, and make her into a superstar, right? Wrong! Ever heard of Linda McCartney? She may be the Queen of Hearts now but she was loathed when Paul first started propping her up onstage.
Second, Ally (GaGa) turns from Fiona Apple to Madonna overnight - and happily goes along with it. She morphs from an introspective singer songwriter to a scantily clad, gyrating, auto-tuned puppet in the space of a couple of frames. Her integrity is hammered home to us from the first time we see her, yet she thinks nothing of tossing the country tinged, brow-furrowing ballads aside in favour of retreads of I Want Your Sex. Are we supposed to admire her for this?
All in all, I found her character not to be likeable at all. When she (literally) first meets Jackson (Cooper) she gets all territorial with a drunken, off-duty cop who hassles him (mildly). She warns him off ("This is MY celebrity! Keep away!") then punches his lights out ("Hooray! She punched out a cop! You go girl!" - what kind of cop are they recruiting in the US these days?)
Afterwards, they go to a supermarket where she tells a cashier it's "not alright" for her to take a picture of Jackson - what business is it of hers? If this was supposed to show her in a caring, protective light, it didn't - she came across as jealous and possessive of someone she had just met.
Coupled with her later career U-turn, I thought this painted Ally in a very negative light. For that reason I didn't really buy her devastation at the (loooong, drawn out) end.
Worth seeing...just the once.