Another indie few people have seen and fewer still will like. Arguably less impressive than Hyde Park on the Hudson…
This movie is a passion project for director David Chase (who created The Sopranos, but has never made a film before…and it shows), and is clearly autobiographical. It’s about a band in New Jersey during the 60’s, but to say that anything much happens to them would be wrong. Also, I put this on my list of “want to see films of the Fall,” and was clearly very wrong.
What Works: James Gandolfini does what he can in the role of the lead character’s father. He’s one of the few actors in this you would know the name of (although there are plenty you might recognize), and scores most of the movie’s best dramatic moments. He’s exciting, his character is granted more than one dimension, his scenes are usually the most poignant, and he has almost all the funny lines. A better movie might have revolved around him instead.
What Doesn’t Work: John Magaro’s lead character may be one of the least compelling I’ve ever seen in a movie. I cannot remember a time that such a clear supporting actor was asked to carry an entire film, and Magaro (to me) strikes out. It’s obvious he’s been cast because of his uncanny resemblance to a young David Chase, but if verisimilitude is this dull, why get it right? Plus, a lot of the other actors are clearly British and asked to deploy unstable Jersey accents. Chase’s movie is sometimes painfully honest-to-life (i.e. boring), so why such tone-deaf casting choices for the supporting players? And then a bizarre, breaking-through-the-4th-wall ending seems to fly in the face of the slice-of-life movie we just saw.
What I Would Have Done Differently: At one point, the lead character is at a movie and comments “This movie is boring, nothing happens, and there’s no music to tell you how to feel.” This is supposed to be hi-larious because it’s a critique of the way the audience probably feels about this movie, which means the movie has somehow out-smarted us. I feel like if Chase knew these problems were there (and a movie about a band with forgettable musical numbers is certainly a problem), he should have fixed them, instead of trying to tell us our perception was ignorant.