I saw Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook made me think he wants to make meaningful movies. For me to like a movie it’d better make me laugh or make me think or inspire me. Growing up the youngest child of a father dealing with alcoholism & other demons....with whom I was very bonded — many scenes and scenarios alluded to— I found distressingly familiar. Inspiring because I thought Ally (female lead) was a very strong and loving person. There’s so many things about the movie that make me think — how could this have been turned around? And...it inspired me to call my brother who’ve I’ve not talked to in a looooooong time.
So boring. There is no "chemistry" between the two leads - everything is so rote, so cliched and so dull. As a viewer I was not rooting for anyone, did not see any real reason for these two to be together and I found the songs utterly uninspired. As poetry, they are trite in the extreme and the music adds nothing. If anything it makes them even duller. The lyrics are clunky and barely accommodate the trudging onward of the music. The one exception is the pop song which knows what it is meant to be, does not pretend to be anything else and succeeds in its chosen genre.
I am stunned at the rave reviews including this one that go so far as to suggest melodramatically that if you did not like it you are somehow emotionally lacking, i.e. "have forgotten how to feel."
No, there is a way to make romantic sparks come alive on screen and in song, this movie had NONE OF THEM.
5
I liked the very first part when he was encouraging her to be a song writer. But Ally never seemed to appreciate anyone's artistry except her own. I missed completely the raw, intense, real dynamic others have felt. It was polished, shallow, and phony to me. I am cynical enough to think Cooper wishes to be discovered as a singer/song writer, and he's used this movie and LG to promote the cause.
3
where this movie lost me was gaga's transformation from Joni Mitchell-esque to Brittany Spears at her worst and that awful SNL moment when we're supposed to be admiring of her character's rise. It was then that I no longer respected Alley's musical talent or taste to say nothing of Bradley Cooper's acceptance of that crap music or the ridiculous producer who "crafts" Gaga's stardom. Yikes. Rewrite please.
2
@michael langlois I agree. I wondered about that as well. Was that a critique of the "star-maker machinery behind the popular song"? Or was it to show Ally was so ambitious, she was willing to sell out?
@michael langloisI could be wrong, but I think you are conflating what the story is about with what you think it should have been about.
1
I can only comment on the first 45 minutes of the movie, because that's the point that I walked out. In addition to the ridiculous plot contrivances and bald exposition, what drove me most crazy were the new songs written for the film. Do we not care about perfect rhymes anymore? Have rap and hip hop so cheapened the art that we're willing to believe that "inspire myself" even comes close to rhyming with "someone else?"
Lazy, lazy, lazy.
5
Really? Cole Porter? Lorenz Hart? Talk about sloppy criticism!
1
I saw the movie last weekend. 2.5 Stars out of 4.
While I enjoyed Lady's performance, I thought Bradley was a distracting cross between Sam Elliot and Kris Kristofferson.
His voice was so low he mumbled at times.
Yet he sang as a tenor. A reverse Jim Nabors.
As for his directorial debut I have one gripe and one question.
First the question: How did Charlie the Dog get outside the garage at the end of the movie? He was inside behind the sliding door when Jackson went into the garage.
Now the gripe: When Lady sings the last song, her 11 o'clock number, there was no need to interject flashback scenes into it. What should have been a classic finish of a fine performance was ruined by a Hollywood cliche technique.
Go back and look at the end of Funny Girl.
Streisand won the Oscar for her performance.
4
@RABNDE
1) Maybe Charlie got out through a “doggie” door. But your point is well-taken.
2) The main need for the flashback, as I saw it, was to keep Bradley Cooper “alive” as the actor. Otherwise, his presence in the film, from my point of view, would have been prematurely truncated. I remember wondering, after the eerily lit garage scene with the forlorn Charlie kneeling outside, “You mean we aren’t going to see Bradley Cooper again?”. But then we did.
2
What the world needs now is love, sweet love...….
3
A two-hour montage with LOL moments of cheese and episodic emotional fits doesn't have the substance to qualify as camp.
2
My soul has been cracked wide open by this movie, the performances, the raw, intense, real dynamic of this love story...I can't watch a clip or download a song without tears streaming...I'm not some star struck teen but a 60 year old level headed business woman - who has been moved and painfully reminded of the profound affect of true intimacy. Bravo/Brava - to everyone involved...
11
Indeed, from another woman in your age group!
I walked in knowing exactly what was coming in this classic tale, and fully expected camp. But both Gaga and Cooper’s performances were so fully committed, so intensely real—within all of the, yes, expected plot points—I just tightened my seat belt and enjoyed the ride. 110%
It’s a movie, a full-length feature, not a talking-head documentary or an appetizer of a music video. A movie, meant to move us, and using all the tools to do so. Put your twenty-first century love of irony and snark away and FEEL something. And if you find that you like it, share it. We can all use a little love right now.
6
@Pat
Pat I agree wholeheartedly-it's a MOVIE! Please just sit back and enjoy it-no need to parse it to death. It's a love story plain and simple. And a darn good one at that if you ask me.
1
Sometimes, Mr Buchanan, a sincere romance tragedy is only just that.
"Camp" has some form of irony to it (even if it is not applied liberally or self-aware in its application) and this particular movie does not have any component of irony in it at all.
As a cultural counterpoint -- So many women's films from the 1930s can translate as camp because the doomed sexual desire that these movies depend upon is hidden from view. Lots of characters that smoke cigarettes staring at each other when they really want to in between the sheets. It adds a subtext that is always there and not there at the same time.
This 2018 film is simply "sincere" (to use the article writer's word) and it is a romance tragedy, which is fine. But it isnt camp. Never will be: which is fine.
To put it a different way, if Tom Ford directed this film, that would have a been to me more interesting (likely ironic) version of the story.
1
I thought the movie was very good and the emotions were authentic. We seem to be in a cultural moment where no one is allowed to experience traditional, authentic emotion without seeming to be ironic about it. We're jaded and cynical. I've noticed that many of the "cheezy" references are coming from younger people, especially women- that Jezebel review being a little on the nose for this observation. I think they're way off base. But we live in a moment where celebrity rules, the rom-com is dead, "Netflix and chill" is the new norm and marriage has become a status symbol for the elite. Maybe it's just killing our ability to see romance as authentic. Maybe I'm just old. Anyway, Lady Gaga's performance alone is worth the price of admission.
12
What I'm suprised that no one is talking about is that Alley has no women in her life to the point that even the women she does hang out with are men (drag queens). Also, there's the trope of her BFF being a gay man who's only role in life is to be her BFF.
15
@MenLA
From a psychodynamic point of view, given the absence of Ally’s mother (for reasons that I don’t remember being explained in the movie, unless I missed them), one can imagine that if Ally’s relationship with her mother was compromised, she may have been wary of relationships with women.
I saw the movie this weekend - and I really enjoyed it, although I cried buckets. For me, the issue wasn't camp versus no camp- I felt the movie lacked some transitions and some development pieces, and that made some scenes begin too abruptly. But it was a very good movie and well worth seeing on the big screen - the acting was excellent, and the singing was really wonderful.
5
Not exactly to the point of article, but after 3 times of telling essentially the same story, wouldn't it have been interesting to see the female's star descending and the male's ascending?
22
His character is predatory and controlling. She's lost her agency. This isn't romance, it's domestic violence 101.
7
@suekush What I saw was the quintessential co-dependent romance. What healthy young woman is going to allow herself to fall in love with a guy who Clearly is addicted to booze and pills? He's the perfect man for a woman who needs to 'fix, help or save' the man she loves. I have no judgment about it. I just wish our culture wouldn't hail this connection between damaged people as 'a great romance.'
2
Ummm... when it’s Bradley Cooper, playing the quintessential bad boy.
3
I didn’t see predatory and controlling. I saw a guy captivated by a woman and her musical talents who wooed her with all the considerable advantages at his disposal - including charm, industry connections and private jet.
It wasn’t Pretty Woman with money and power vs sex.
8
Very seldom do I hear or read that Cooper's Star is campy. This NYT ambiguous review seems to concretize the very argument it loathes. Nothing to be scared of if one likes the movie. So much unnecessary explanation. In the end, just plainly say if you liked it or not.
1
'A Star Is Born" was High Camp when it starred Frederick March and Janet Gaynor in the '30s. With each subsequent iteration, it has become smarmier, more over the top melodramatic, more cringe-inducing and/or unintentionally hilarious.
One might gave hoped the "Star" schlock factory had been shut down by the time Streisand and Kristofferson were done flogging it. But as it seems the United States is marching backwards rapidly, headed straight for post-Reconstruction era Mississippi in our culture and our politics, perhaps another bloated production of this dried out old chestnut was inevitable.
With Trump in the White House, Roy Moore a serious contender for the Senate, and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, there's no telling how much lower 'low brow' can go - but another big-budget "Star" is certainly a bellwether.
8
@chambolle: Neither the first version nor the second version of this movie was smarmy, over-the-top or campy in the least. You may have been watching them with jaundiced eyes and a 21st Century sensibility.
11
This is hilarious and ridiculous. Perhaps you think neuroses is campy. Actually, this film glamorizes very human emotions of sexual longing, desire for achievement and artistic insecurity. In the 30s, the Gaynor-March version was an obvious re-telling of many Hollywood tales like Garbo and Gilbert or John Barrymore and anyone. What it really does is touch some chord of recognition in many of us who have loved a complex person and grown through that love.
3
@Eileen Paroff You articulated a truth revealed by the film, Eileen, that I didn’t do for myself, when you wrote that people can grow through loving a complex person. Well, it's a truth for me, because It's something I've experienced.
1
Saw the movie the first chance I could. While it is a little longer than necessary, I loved it. Despite its tragic story, it is the sincere direction of Mr Cooper, the raw talent of Gaga, and the fantastic music that left me feeling good. That doesn't happen often after seeing many so-called groundbreaking movies.
24
@Andrea Damour
How did Charlie the dog get outside the garage door?
The previous scene showed him in the kitchen on the inside of the sliding glass door.
Continuity issue for the Director?
1
@RABNDE Dog door. When Jackson didn’t come back inside for a while, Charlie went outside for a look. Watching him squeeze through the dog door would have been silly. Seeing Charlie outside was poignant.
1
I have not seen the movie, but doesn't it speak to people's cynicism and fear of emotion? Yet ironically they post every little feeling on social media.
17