Life's Soundtrack

Rating: 8/10 (25 June 2014)

I knew going in that Clint Eastwood was not going to do this movie as a standard musical. (The French might like the movie better this way, though the final credits do run over a musical street scene in which even Chris Walken's Godfather-type character dances in the chorus.)
At more than two hours, this movie still has to turn many of the events in the character's lives into highlighted moments. For example, the tragedy of Frankie Valli's daughter, Francine, is obviously a movie all by itself, but this movie only has time to suggest rather than explore it.
It is surprising that the movie does try to be more than just the "Frankie Valli Story," giving some attention to the other members of the group. One of the ways we get more of them than we might have is the technique of having them talk to the camera. It makes the viewer conscious of the play for a moment, but then the story--and the music--draws us back in, and we know something more than we might have otherwise.
There are other ways the movie makes us realize that it is a little bit the Tommy-Bob-and-Nick story, too. For example, we find out what it was like for Nick to room with Tommy for what he describes as a ten-year jail sentence, and I never thought I would find out Bob's story behind the song "December, 1963 (What a Lady, What a Night)" (but I never thought I needed to know).
There are delightful characters along the way such as record producer and sometime co-songwriter Bob Crewe. Walken is good as the mob boss who made sure that Valli didn't get in too much trouble. Also, while the band members do not seem to age much during the 1960s and early 1970s, the make up on their appearances in 1990 are pretty spectacular. (That is, they don't seem fake.)
Most of all, this movie uses lots of the Four Seasons' music, reminding me that even though I was never a big fan at the time, they were nevertheless the soundtrack to more of my own life than I had realized. I can remember like it was a minute ago, driving along the Kancamagus Highway in New Hampshire in 1962 between my father at the wheel and older brother riding shotgun and "Sherry" beaming into our car radio from WBZ in Boston.