THE JERSEY BOYS

The 2005 Broadway, award-winning, biographical musical about the rise and plummet of the “Four Seasons” , anchored by high-pitched crooner Frankie Valli, falls flat on the big screen; lacking the authenticity, originality and “all that jazz” of the play, it ploddingly, superficially portrays the accelerated ascent of New Jersey petty thieves, to icons of musical notoriety; plastic, shallow depictions, identical stage rendition: each member giving his own interpretation of the events; sizzled live, fizzled in director Clint Eastwood’s film.

John Lloyd Young (a Tony winner for his performance on Broadway) did not translate well into the movie adaptation of “Frankie Valli”; one-dimensional, emotionless; his voice at times whiney, helium-infused, bereft of the energy, range, excitement it elicited on the stage.

Vincent Piazza (younger clone of Dermot Mulroney) pounds the part of “Tommy DeVito ”, the slippery Svengali, manager of the “Four Lovers/Four Seasons”; with humongous levity, tongue-in-cheek savoir faire, he lends legitimacy to an unfortunately stale, “staged” scenario.

Selling over a million records, “The Four Seasons” is the musical Horatio Alger story; all the world loves a hero/heroes; Frankie Valli and crew deservedly “walk as men”, giants, in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; possibly it was “too good to be true” and expectations too high, to wish for anything more from “The Jersey Boys”.

TWO STARS!!

Peneflix