The stage musical brought to film, an interesting portrait of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons .

Rating: Null/10 (24 November 2014)

I first watched this movie in 2014 and now again almost 5 years later, I enjoyed it just as much the second time. I really love this movie and it brings back great memories.
I grew up with the music of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, I was in high school and college in the 1960s when they released many of their greatest hits. But like most other fans really knew nothing about them. That many of them had criminal records was always kept a secret back then, the public probably would not have been so kind if that had been known.
John Lloyd Young, a small man and good singing imitator of Valli plays him. Valli was a very small man, even at 30 he was 5'-5" and 116 pounds, according to his mug shot for skipping out on a hotel bill in Ohio the prior year.
Director Clint Eastwood was wise to have all the singing done by the actors, many of the original stage production, and recorded live with additional musicians off-camera. As a result and without lip-sync all the singing is fresh and realistic. Young has a very good voice for the Valli songs, but at a couple of places when original Valli songs are part of the soundtrack we can hear how really exceptional Valli's voice was in his prime.
The story we see in the movie is pretty close to what happened in real life, although a few things have been questioned. Nevertheless it is a pretty interesting look at an important singing group from that period.
It was also nice having Christopher Walken in the movie, playing mob figure Gyp DeCarlo who Valli says was almost like a father to him.