Captures the Spirit of the Broadway Play

Rating: 9/10 (25 June 2014)

I was surprised to see how long this show has been on Broadway. Having seen the touring show, I have become a fan. I was suspicious of the movie version because my first response is nearly always, "How will they screw this up?" They didn't. Clint Eastwood managed to keep the rapid fire story of the four guys from New Jersey well paced an interesting throughout. It starts with the three things that happen to kids. One is to become famous, and that is pretty far out there. A doowop group manages to make a few bucks while breaking and entering and spending an occasional six months in prison. They have no spark, until Frankie Valli becomes a part of them. His falsetto elevates the rest of the group but they still are stuck in place. Enter Bob Gaudio, the true genius of the group. He, along with Bob Crewe, become the reason things begin to blossom. They take their stupid name "The Four Lovers" and turn it into "The Four Seasons." There are some cracks about this guy Vivaldi but since he's dead it doesn't matter. As things transpire we alternate between the successes of the group, culminating with their appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Through all this we get to hear the music. The hit list is really nice and they do very good renditions of the songs. In order to get them seed money, Tommy DeVito hooks up with a loan shark from the mob and eventually drops the group into nearly seven hundred thousand dollars in debt. As big as they were, this was real money. How they deal with that and the tribulations of their day-to-day existences is what this is all about. The time zips by as we develop a real attraction for this charismatic quartet. I found it to be a wonderful film.