Delayed Reaction: Crazy Heart

The Pitch: If we make Jeff Bridges sing, will he win an Oscar?

Jeff Bridges is an alcoholic country singer in the twilight of his career who is given a chance to make things right.

I'm an Oscar wonk by my own admission. While I like the ideal of an Oscar being a merit-based award for an individual film, I understand that's not how things go all the time. There are a large number of factors that go into a successful Oscar campaign which I find nearly as fascinating as trying to define the "best" anything. A big factor is lifetime achievement, or as I like to call it, the "it's his/her time" Oscar. It doesn't take a genius to see these coming. Minutes after Leonardo DiCaprio lost for The Wolf of Wall Street, you could tell he was going to win for his next nomination (The Revenant, two years later, it turns out). In a streak of 12 winless nominations over 25 years, Meryl Streep was even pulling off nominations for lightweight films like Julie & Julia and The Devil Wears Prada. By the time The Iron Lady came along, it was obvious she was about to win that elite third Oscar. In a nearly 40 year career by 2009, Jeff Bridges built up about the best reputation possible. He was a generous performer who always seemed happy to defer to someone else for the glory. Despite decades of serious work, he's most remembered as the Dude, something that he happily embraces. It feels like all it took was someone saying "you know, Jeff Bridges hasn't won an Oscar yet" for it to become inevitable that he would win one.

That's the story of Crazy Heart. It's a character study, which is another way of saying it's a movie completely in service of a performance. A lot of Oscar winning performances unsurprisingly fall into this category. They actually match up well with the "it's his/her time" Oscars. Still Alice is another nice example of this. Crazy Heart even got a extra nomination for Maggie Gyllenhall for being a great scene partner for Bridges.

The movie is fine. T Bone Burnett's music sounds authentic and captures the right feeling. Bridges and Gyllenhaal hit all the right notes in their performances. It reminded me of the country music version of The Wrestler. In fact, wait. It really is The Wrestler for country music. I'm putting that thought together in real time. Whoa...

I had trouble buying into Bridges and Gyllenhaal as an item. Maggie Gyllenhaal has  always had an older look to her (I swear, I mean that in a nice way), but that 27 year age gap really throws me off. Now, you may wonder why it bothers me so much in this but not as much that in Seabiscuit he marries Elizabeth Banks. Here's why:

1) Elizabeth Banks is three years older than Maggie Gyllenhaal and also has a very grown up face.

2) Bridges is rich in Seabiscuit. He's broke in Crazy Heart, with little else to offer. The coupling makes more sense even with a cynical view in Seabiscuit.

3) Bridges and Banks were cast based on the ages of the actual people they played.

4) Their romance wasn't the focus of Seabiscuit, unlike Crazy Heart.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend