Movie Reaction: A Star Is Born

Formula: A Star Is Born + 42 years

or A Star Is Born + 64 years

or A Star Is Born + 79 years

There are many, many interesting things about A Star Is Born to talk about. It's Bradley Cooper's directorial debut. It's the early season frontrunner for this year's Oscars. The casting of the supporting roles is pretty odd when you break them down. However, the biggest and most important story is Lady Gaga.

You see, Lady Gaga plays the titular star and - for better (Judy Garland) or for worse (Barbara Streisand) - she is the one that history will most associate with the film. Simply put, Gaga gives a powerhouse performance. She plays Ally, a dish cleaner who performs at a local drag show for fun. After a chance encounter with popular country singer Jackson Maine, she falls in love and gets the shot at stardom that she never dreamed was possible. Gaga completely disappears into the role of the unsure, reluctant singer. This is Lady Gaga: a singer famous for stunts like wearing a meat suit. She is one of the most self-confident performers ever, and, playing Ally, she pulls off making an audience believe that she doesn't think she's good enough. That's talent. I can't say enough good things about her work here. I already knew she could act. As much as I hated American Horror Story: Hotel, I loved virtually every scene with Gaga on screen. I had no doubt she could carry a movie. I just didn't think she'd carry one with such vulnerability. Make no mistake though, she was cast for her singing, and her singing performances are the highlights of the movie. You'd have to be dead to not feel something in those moments.

Bradley Cooper is getting a lot of attention for the film too. Rightfully so. He did direct, co-produce, co-write, and co-star in the movie. It's his baby, so to speak. He's pretty tremendous is this. He spends most of his time doing his best Sam Elliott impression and it doesn't seem silly. That's how good he is. His character, Jackson Maine, is a self-destructive individual who is content with being miserable until he meets Lady Gaga's Ally. Cooper loses all self-consciousness for the role. More importantly, he plays drunk really well. I know that may not sound like much, but that's something a lot of actors fail at. It's great seeing him light up when Jackson is performing with Ally.

That eclectic cast I mentioned includes Sam Elliott as Jackson's brother (yes, brother, not father), Dave Chappelle as an old friend of Jackson's, and Andrew Dice Clay as Ally's father. I'm not sure what the motivation was for the casting, but it works well. It doesn't feel like Cooper just called in a bunch of favors from friends. The actors all fit in the world of the film.

Despite some surprisingly excellent direction, A Star Is Born can't shake the fact that it is an 80 year old story. You can tell that this is a remake the same way you can tell when a story has been adapted from a Shakespeare play. The beats are familiar and play out very linearly. The way Jackson meets Ally is a little contrived. They fall in love a little too easily. She shoots to stardom a little too quickly. There are some half-baked ideas like art vs. commerce that don't get enough time to play out. You could probably go after the fact that it's a story about a woman who owes everything to a man if you wanted to. But dammit, it hits the beats so perfectly that it's hard to care. When Gaga belts out that first song, I stopped caring about the implausibility of all the steps that came before it. It's all feeling and execution.

On a side note, I can't stop comparing this to La LaLand. Both are Oscar front runners early in the season. They rely on the feeling you have watching them to make up for the simplistic plotting. They are both about career ambition butting heads with romance. They are odes to old Hollywood but in different ways. La La Land tried to recreate the feel of the old musicals. A Star Is Born is literally one of the oldest stories in the business. You could damn near swap their titles without causing a problem. I don't think these are superficial comparisons either. I'm curious to see if A Star Is Born gets the same backlash that La La Land did in the upcoming months.

I bought into A Star Is Born completely and immediately. The two performances at the center of it are fantastic. Sam Elliott may even be in the discussion for an Oscar too. The music is catchy and authentic. The big moments are all I could think about when leaving the theater. It's one of those movies that's good not because it is without blemishes but because its highs far outpace its lows. 

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend