Proving once and for all that a turd can’t be polished, the seminal Hollywood favorite A Star is Born is remade for the third time, and it’s as cut-and-dry as they come.
All the original story elements are here – Jackson Maine, a drunken star on decline (Bradley Cooper, The Hangover), Ally, the talented ingenue he discovers (Lady Gaga, in her motion picture debut), and the love they share while one rises to stardom (heh-heh.) and the other falls flat (hee-hee.). I wondered on the way home why it took two other directors — Steven Spielberg (?!) and Clint Eastwood (?!?!) — to attempt this film before Mr. Cooper made his directorial debut with this, and also how nothing changed at all for these characters. If Warner Bros. & MGM, and by association, the screenwriters, kept the storyline the same for the sake of familiarity, or wanton laziness (you decide), that was a really bad move — If you’ve seen any of the previous versions, you’ve already seen this film. The only changes made are the actors, the songs and the time in which it takes place. Speaking of the former two, the only three actors worth their oats in this film are Lady Gaga, Sam Elliot (Road House), who deserves a Best Supporting Actor nod as Jackson’s beleaguered eldest brother-turned-handler, and, oddly enough, Andrew Dice Clay (The Adventures of Ford Fairlane) as Ally’s well-meaning father who can’t keep money even if it were sewed into his pants. Actors like Dave Chappelle (he of the eponymous TV show) are there and then gone; not much else to say about that.
As for the songs, most are bizarrely cut into snippets, with only three numbers played in full to my immediate recollection — the movie feels like a sampler designed solely to make you buy the soundtrack album, which Lady Gaga devotees will doubtless buy in staggering numbers. Don’t get me wrong, her voice is stellar, and truthfully, her future is not in monotone, drawling autotuned pop songs, but in hard rock. That being said, “Shallows” is the only number that truly resonated with me. Still, to each their own.
I honestly don’t want to be this unkind toward the film, but as it stands, A Star is Born, while a feast to listen to and look at (Matthew Libatique’s luscious anamorphic cinematography will win him the Oscar), is not worth seeing in the slightest. It almost reminds me of the cinematic adaptations of The Great Gatsby thus far, but with Gatsby, one need only look back to the source novel for the best version; A Star is Born has no good version to look back on, and that was the first of many mistakes with this one.
Rating: 2/5
Computerscope 