Minor exercise in nostalgia -- but how it drags

Rating: 3/10 (13 February 2012)

Take 'A Star is Born', throw in a bit of 'Singin in the Rain' and a touch too of 'Sunset Boulevard'. Keep all the clichés and throw out any real plot development, and you have this fairly flat soufflé which just refuses to rise. It's supposed to be an homage to silent movies but is way short of the best of that genre. It could have been worthwhile if the script had contained either more wit or more real emotion .. in this one, everyone seems just to be going through the motions, though I must confess that the star, Jean Dujardin, does his best with the lame material. An Oscar chance? It shows how far cinema has regressed almost 85 years after the introduction of the talkies!