CHRISTOPHER BRAY DVD OF THE WEEK
Ask yourself who would be a natural to direct a Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons biopic and Clint Eastwood wouldn’t come to mind first. Clint has made a movie about Charlie Parker (Bird) and a documentary about Great American Songbook lyricist Johnny Mercer. Neither suggests a pop fan.
Yet here is Jersey Boys, his take on the West End hit musical, and a picture that for much of its two-hour-plus running time pulses and pounds to the rock beat.
Clint being Clint, though, it isn’t all song and dance. Kicking off in the group’s New Jersey backyard, the movie is like Goodfellas-lite, with young Frankie Castelluccio (John Lloyd Young) apprenticed to the Mob. But local Don Gyp DeCarlo (Christopher Walken) has bigger plans for his trainee than kneecapping and numberrunning. He wants Frankie’s falsetto at the top of the hit parade.
He gets him there – though not convincingly. There’s no denying Young can hit the same high notes as Valli but his voice is nowhere near as easy on the ear. Worse, like most of his co-stars, Young acts as if he’s still on Broadway – projecting to an imaginary back row 500 yards from the screen.
The best reason to catch Jersey Boys is Walken. Not because he’s an old hand at gangland slaughter but because he’s an even older hand at dancing – and in the closing moments we see him groove on down. It’s worth the wait.
Keira Knightley sings better than you’d imagine in Begin Again – but not well enough to make anything of the movie’s airheaded feelgood story.
If you really fancy a musical, you could do worse than Andrew Sinclair’s Under Milk
Wood. No, there aren’t any melodies, but thanks to Dylan Thomas’s lyrical dialogue, and Richard Burton’s mellifluous vocals, this s is one long song.