Before I begin this review, I would like to thank all 115 of my followers! I achieved this accomplishment two weeks ago! However, I wasn’t able to publish this post as early as I had wanted to. That’s because I started my Clean Movie Month reviews and was participating in a few blogathons. But I fortunately found the time to share this blog follower dedication review with the people who have helped my blog grow and thrive! For this post, I have chosen a movie that was released in June of 2014. Even though I talked about a musical in my previous blog follower dedication review, I chose the film, Jersey Boys, for this particular post. I was familiar with the music of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, so I could appreciate the songs that appear in this film. When it comes to the band itself, I didn’t know much information about them. This movie was, to a certain extent, educational. That’s because this film explores the history of The Four Seasons. It also talked about how some of the songs were created, as well as who the members of the band were. So, let’s learn more about Jersey Boys through this review!

Things I liked about the film:

The acting: One of the strongest components of this film is the acting performances! From what I’ve heard, the cast consisted of actors and actresses who also starred in the Jersey Boys stage play. I feel that this was a good decision because this means that before film production began, they already knew their characters. This shows in all of the acting performances, as the actors and actresses appeared to be comfortable in their roles. Something I noticed while watching this film was the accents. As I’ve said before, accents in movies can be hit or miss. In Jersey Boys, however, the accents sounded authentic enough to be satisfying. This goes back to the fact that the cast is from the original stage play, as they had plenty of time to perfect that part of the performance!

The aesthetic: I really liked the world that was created in this film! Everything looked and felt like the time period in which this story took place in. Even the cinematography correlated with the previously mentioned time period. This showed how much the creative team behind this movie cared about the details that went into their project. It also made the movie feel immersive, like the audience themselves are visiting that world. The locations and settings of Jersey Boys were visually appealing!

The music: Because this movie is about Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, the majority of their music is featured throughout the story. Since I like their music, I found these parts of the film to be enjoyable. Jersey Boys was a stage play before becoming a movie, as I’ve said before. This aspect worked in the performers’ favor because they were familiar with the music prior to the film’s production. All of the actors in the band sounded close enough to the original group to keep me, as an audience member, satisfied. It added to the authenticity of their collective performance!

What I didn’t like about the film:

Breaking the “fourth wall”: At certain points in the movie, some members of The Four Seasons told their story directly to the audience. While this was an interesting idea, it didn’t work as well as it could have. This is because the “fourth wall” was broken so infrequently, it ended up feeling out of place. Only three members of the group get to break the “fourth wall”. The only time Frankie Valli gets this kind of moment was toward the end of the movie. The fact that more than one person was trying to tell the story made it difficult to decipher who the key narrator was supposed to be.

Scenes that don’t mesh together: When it comes to movie musicals, the segments of story and music are supposed to work together to create a cohesive narrative and propel the story forward. One example is when Mother Abbess sings “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” in The Sound of Music. But I never felt that the story segments and musical segments meshed together in Jersey Boys. Anytime a musical segment appeared in the film, it felt like the story segments were paused for the sake of presenting the musical segments. This disrupted the flow of the narrative.

The run-time: Jersey Boys is a two hour and fourteen-minute film. Because of this run-time, the movie felt longer than it was intended and some scenes were too drawn-out. Having the film set at one hour and thirty or forty minutes would have worked better for the overall production. Drawn-out scenes could be shortened to a length of time where that part of the story could get straight to the point. If the “fourth wall” moments that I mentioned earlier were reserved for the end of the movie, this would shorten the run-time as well.

My overall impression:

At best, Jersey Boys is an ok film. I can definitely see how this project could work as a Broadway stage show. However, this particular story would have worked better as either a documentary or as a mini-series. There was so much interesting content to this narrative, that I actually learned more about Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons than I had expected. But, because of the set run-time, there was only so much material that was discussed. Even though I learned a lot about this particular musical group, I feel like I could have discovered this same information on the internet. When it comes to movie musicals, Jersey Boys is not the worst of them. But there are movies within this genre that are better than this one.

Overall score: 6 out of 10

Do you like that music of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons? Which movie musical do you like? Please tell me in the comment section!

Have fun at the movies!

Sally Silverscreen