Walk Like a Man, Talk Like a Man, Sing Like a Girl

Rating: 6/10 (5 July 2014)

I am not particularly knowledgeable about pop music, being more of a classical man, and must admit that I am seriously allergic to falsetto voices. ("Walk like a man, talk like a man, sing like a girl"). I am therefore not an admirer of Frankie Valli or The Four Seasons, and have never been tempted into the theatre to see "Jersey Boys", the stage musical which tells the story of the group. My wife, however, is a great lover of all sixties pop, so I could not avoid the film when it appeared in our local cinema.
Pop music biographies have been popular in the cinema in recent years; among the others I recall are "Walk the Line" about Johnny Cash, "Ray" about Ray Charles, "What's Love Got to Do with It?" about Tina Turner and "Dreamgirls", a thinly-disguised account of Diana Ross and the Supremes. I was a bit surprised to discover that this one was directed by Clint Eastwood, partly because I assumed that he had retired from the movie business and partly because it is not the type of film I associate with him. I suppose that it's never too late to teach an old dog new tricks and that the octogenarian Eastwood wanted to try his hand at something other than Westerns, war films and crime thrillers.
Showbiz biopics tend to come with their own particular set of clichés, but "Jersey Boys" imports some familiar clichés from other genres. It revolves around the assumption that all Italian- Americans, or at least all working-class Italian-Americans, are either fully-fledged gangsters or exist somewhere on the fringes of gangsterdom. The film opens with Tommy DeVito, one of the group, claiming that if it wasn't for him, his friends would have wound up in someone's trunk with a bullet in their heads. He also asserts that there are only three ways out of their neighbourhood (Belleville, New Jersey) - join the Mob, join the Army or get famous. Frankie and Nick Massi both rely on the "get famous" approach- Bob Gaudio, the fourth member of the group, was not from Belleville- but Tommy likes to keep his options open, experimenting with the "crime" route as well as the "fame" route, and serves a couple of jail sentences.
The film also relies on another recent Hollywood cliché, the one about the kindly, decent mob boss who exercises a sort of benevolent dictatorship over his neighbourhood. (See also "Sleepers" for another recent film to make use of both these clichés). And of course all homosexuals- the group's manager Bob Crewe is gay- are incredibly camp and effeminate.
Another well-worn convention in showbiz films is that all group acts eventually split up because of tensions within the group, and this convention (which I must say is borne out by a number of real-life examples) is observed here. Surprisingly, these tensions do not arise between the group's two main talents, lead singer Frankie and keyboard- player-cum-songwriter Bob, who remain friends throughout, but between Tommy and Nick; it is eventually Nick, the quietest of the four, who quits. Besides dealing with relationships within the group, the film also covers their personal lives, especially Frankie's; there are sub- plots about his unhappy marriage to his wife Mary and the story of his talented but troubled daughter Francine. In the meantime Tommy is in trouble with the law again, this time over debts owed to a loan shark.
The only well-known actor in the film is Christopher Walken as your friendly neighbourhood mobster Gyp DeCarlo. However unrealistic this character may be, at least Walken gives a good acting performance. The four actors playing the four musicians, however, do not make much of an impression and lack the charisma one would expect of famous pop stars. There is no great acting performance to compare with those from Joaquin Phoenix in "Walk the Line" or Jamie Foxx in "Ray".
There is enough dramatic tension for me to award an above-average mark, but this is after all a musical and my dislike for the music of The Four Seasons meant that I did not really care for the film. (Part of the reason for my preference for "Walk the Line" and "Ray" is that I would much rather listen to Johnny Cash and Ray Charles than to Frankie Valli). Those who are fans of the group may enjoy it more than I did. 6/10