Saturday, November 3, 2018

A Star is Boring

I went to see A Star is Born and didn’t like it at all.  The movie dragged its way through a weak storyline that lost all the zest and zip of past versions of the story. Bradley Cooper over-played a dirty old man, rather than a washed-up singer who is drowning his lousy life in booze and pills. He looked far too old to be with Lady Gaga, and she looked too young and naive to be attracted to him. 

I cringed when they were in the love scenes, especially since the word “fuck” was the primary vocabulary of the movie.  Gaga's character had gone from naïve to salty, and I just didn't buy the changes she made to be with Cooper's character.


I finally turned to my movie buddy and told her I was out; she quickly agreed and we left the theater. Outside, we both agreed that this movie just didn’t have any spark to it, and we were disappointed--especially after reading all the reviews and seeing how highly-rated Rotten Tomatoes listed it.
As far as Oscar-worthy, I say nay—unless there is a new category for “Most Often Used F-word.”

1 comment:

John said...

It's like we saw a different movie. I didn't feel Cooper came across as a dirty old man; we thought he was just a tired, boozed-up guy who had lost his spark. We thought the story was completely captivating, the acting strong, and the music very good.

What I didn't like was the sudden conversion of Ally from country to pop. The sequence where she's suddenly dyeing her hair and rehearsing a ditzy pop song and dance routine was jarring. I know they weren't showing us the time passing, but I didn't see the character as wanting to be or going pop at any time, so this sudden change felt strange and off-putting to me.

SPOILER

Also, if I had been doing the story, I would have had Jackson overcome all the embarrassment he had caused, get well, ignore Ally's producer, and overcome. I didn't feel his character was one that would allow the producer to get to him like he did and send him spiraling to suicide. I felt it was more a story of two people finding and healing one another than what was shown. I don't discount how they handled it, I just saw it differently or felt there was a better story that could have been told in the third act.