Great songs, lacking charisma from the leads

Rating: Null/10 (10 July 2018)

I watched this movie last night, I've wanted to see the Broadway show for sometime now. HBO was free for a few days and this was one of their offerings.
Overall the film was just okay, I enjoyed it mostly for the great songs and the fact I'm from New Jersey too. I'm not really sure how true to life the story was. There were at least some things I know were factual, like the untimely death of Mr. Vali's daughter. I did not find John Lloyd Young's performance playing Frankie Valli to be that good even if he did win a Tony for performing onstage. Good stage actors are not always good film actors and vise versa. He simply has no charisma in my opinion. Also, some scenes were not that well presented . For instance the makeup used near the end of the film to make Mr. Young and the others look older was almost laughably bad. The supporting cast, the guys playing the other members of the group, were decent to good. Some of them were also from the Broadway show. Christopher Walken is also featured. I've found Mr. Walken's performances in recent to be lackluster, like he's phoning it in. Here he was acceptable playing a sentimental mobster who helped the group's career. I suspect the movie depicted Frankie Valli as a better person than he may really is. I guess that's to be expected from these bio stories. If you like the music of the 'Four Seasons' then you'll probably be able to tolerate this film too. Clint Eastwood has proven himself to be a fine director in the past, I don't think he did a good job with this film, perhaps he should stay away from interpreting successful Broadway musicals for the cinema. If he was trying to give it the look and feel of a Broadway show instead of a movie, he failed.
I give this film 5 out of 10 stars, that's being generous mainly because I enjoyed the musical performances and I'm a proud Jersey boy myself.