From the street to the stage

Clint Eastwood’s adaptation of the Broadway musical Jersey Boys into a movie broadens the story of the four friends from New Jersey who became the Four Seasons and rose to stardom in the early 1960s. While it includes many of their popular hits, it delves into their background and shows the conflicts that developed as their popularity grew. 

Eastwood is one of our finest directors, creating such masterpieces as Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima. But those films had a focus, a sustained theme that the director explored in depth. His new film feels scattered as it moves from one theme to another without developing any of them with much depth.

This musical biography begins in 1951 in Belleville, N.J., where we meet Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) and Frankie Castelluccio (John Lloyd Young). Tommy and his friend Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) enlist Frankie’s help in stealing a safe. When they’re caught, Tommy takes the blame so that Frankie isn’t charged.

Frankie has a wonderful singing voice that can rise into a falsetto. A local mob boss, Gym DeCarlo (Christopher Walken), takes Frankie under his protection because he loves his singing.

The three friends eventually form a musical group and later add songwriter Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen) over the objections of Tommy, who sees himself as the autocratic manager of the group. Bob wants them to make demos and get discovered. He writes “Sherry,” which they sing over the phone to their producer, Bob Crewe (Mike Doyle), convincing him to record it. It becomes a hit, and their next two songs, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “Walk Like a Man,” go to number one.

They go on the road, and after a while the troubles grow. Frankie’s marriage suffers from his being gone. Tommy gambles away all their earnings and lands them in a half-million dollars of debt. That’s when the group splits, and Bob and Frankie keeps things going, with Frankie Valli (he changed his last name early on) performing with backup musicians.

Years later, in 1990, the group is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Frankie says that the best time ever was “just four guys under a street light,” singing. That joy of making music comes out at times, but it’s overshadowed by all the conflict.

Certainly creating music and performing is not all glamorous, and that mixture of the joy of their art and the grind of making money at it is a worthy theme to explore. But everything feels half-done. Many side stories are thrown in without much development.

Frankie’s wife, Mary (Renee Marino), gives a nice performance in her opening scene when she first meets Frankie. But later she becomes a clichéd alcoholic wife forced to raise their three daughters on her own because her husband is gone 200 days of the year.

The film’s tone varies from serious to lighthearted. Throughout, a few of the characters talk directly to the audience.

Those of my generation will enjoy the many songs in the film, and the performances are great. And I loved the West Side Story ending with the entire cast dancing in the street to “December, 1963” before the credits roll. But that joy is missing in much of the film.

Eastwood is a jazz musician himself and often writes music for his films. Jersey Boys is enjoyable for the most part, but it failed to grab me emotionally the way, for example, Eastwood’s film Bird, about jazz musician Charlie Parker, did.