Not great, but good

Rating: 7/10 (18 October 2018)

This isn't really my kind of movie, but the wife really wanted to see it and it has good reviews so I thought why not?
The movie is enjoyable, very good at the start then dips towards the end but certainly worth a watch. I'm surprised with the amount of praise Gaga is getting though, her acting was pretty "meh" for the most part, she absolutely shines and was very emotive when singing, but as a singer you expect that, the rest of her performance was pretty average although not enough to take you out of the story. I was really impressed with Bradley Cooper though, he plays his role very well and I wasn't expecting it at all.
The story is a fairly standard "rags to riches" tale for Gaga and fairly standard "aging rocker addicted to everything" tale for Cooper and while they do it well enough, the pacing seemed off, it seemed to drag out certain moments and rush past others, leaving the ending a little disjointed
Without giving too many spoilers, the scene at the end with the dog was just classic tear baiting and really dulled any emotional impact for me, completely unnecessary and rather than being engrossed in the film I could only think "classic Hollywood"
In summary a good film, certainly worth a watch but not quite worthy of the glowing praise it seems to be getting