The Only Broadway Adaptation Clint Eastwood Ever Directed Was A Flop

Musicals are practically scientifically engineered to lift your spirits. Plots be damned, you can’t help but feel a little proud after two-plus hours of watching people cut a rug while singing about their innermost feelings. It’s a basic principle that allowed Broadway titans like Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber to reimagine tragic love stories and gothic horror thrillers as pleasurable spectacles about murder, revenge, and, most frightening of all, having to deal with a needy, egotistical lead. actor Even when they end in sadness and despair, you still leave the theater humming their catchiest earworms on an endorphin high (or, if you’ve just watched “Cats” for the first timemaybe a different kind of high).

What happens, then, when you hire the authority on cinematic melancholy that is 21st century Clint Eastwood to turn your Broadway smash into a movie? You get “Jersey Boys,” possibly one of the most depressing and depressing musicals ever committed to the screen. If you ever wondered if “Mystic River” or even “Million Dollar Baby” could be a little less depressing if their characters sang about their emotions in between the moments of anguish, loss and turmoil, the answer, and judging by the results here, is … not really. Still, while it’s not hard to understand why “Jersey Boys” was a flop upon its release in 2014, that same sobriety also makes it one of a kind in the modern film musical landscape.

Eastwood’s gritty, sober portrayal of 1960s rock ‘n’ roll sensation The Four Seasons’ rapid rise to fame and the good times (and especially the bad) that followed is truer to its source material than you might suspect. The original Broadway jukebox musical written by Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman (yes, as in the Oscar-winning “Annie Hall” co-writer) belies the idea of ​​being a great portrayal of the band’s story, by presenting itself as something akin to living life. a theater documentary. Accordingly, The Man With No Name generally avoids the kinds of fancy you’d encounter a biopic musical like “Rocketman.” Instead, almost all of the songs are witty and presented in a realistic light (credit to the end), whether it’s The Seasons singing live in sequences that Eastwood and his trusted cinematographer did Tom Stern mood by shooting with their typical steady, fuss-free broadcasts and a calm black-and-brown color palette or the group’s music being used as a soundtrack for montages, many of which tend to focus on the more doleful beats in the story band.

What you end up with is a movie that plays a bit like a bummer version of “That Thing You Do!” … and that’s even before the success of the Seasons (thanks to all-time pop classics like “Sherry” and “Big Girls Don’t Cry”) is beset by the band’s internal struggles, mob debts and family hardships. But where Tom Hanks’ musical about a fictional ’60s band that skyrockets the Billboard charts mostly manages to make up for its cutesy nostalgia with more sobering moments, Eastwood’s relentless attitude clashes with the scenes where “Jersey Boys” wants to be more lighthearted. -hearty and charming. Most people agree on this point too, as shown by the film Rotten Tomatoes degrees (51 percent from critics, with the audience score only slightly higher at 62 percent) and a disappointing number at the box office ($67 million worldwide against a budget of $40 million).

Still, with its soulful music, themes of flawed masculinity, and a quick story about the price that comes with a lifetime spent in the spotlight, “Jersey Boys” is certainly as personal as anything else Eastwood has ever directed. Despite its missteps, it even succeeds as, essentially, an anti-Broadway crowd pleaser and that all-too-rare specimen of a musical that might leave you feeling more depressed than you went in. (You know, if that’s your thing.)