Review: A Star is Born

A professionally successful but personally destructive country-rock musician (Bradley Cooper) hooks up with a star on the rise (Lady Gaga). They become romantically and creatively involved, but eventually Cooper’s demons get a hold of him. Sam Elliott plays Cooper’s no BS (much) older brother, Andrew Dice Clay is Gaga’s salt-of-the-earth dad, and Rafi Gavron plays a slick British manager who attaches himself to Gaga.

Bradley Cooper made his directorial debut and assumes lead actor and co-writer duties with this 2019 version of the classic story of a doomed relationship between two musicians. Despite much critical and commercial success, I think Cooper does a pretty terrible job both behind and in front of the camera and not much else goes right, either. Yeah, let the hate mail flow. It’s me against the world again, I guess.

Co-scripted by Will Fetters (“Remember Me”, “The Lucky One”) and Eric Roth (writer of the much better films “Forrest Gump” and “The Insider”), this is a horribly choppy, underdone film founded on an already archaic story by William A. Wellman and Robert Carson first brought to the screen in 1937 (Fredric March had the role Cooper essentially plays here). It’s not quite the editing failure of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, but this is some undeniably messy storytelling nonetheless. The scene where Cooper and Lady Gaga first perform ‘Shallow’ makes zero narrative sense. From the only information we’re previously given, it’s just a chorus at this point…but now all of a sudden Cooper has filled in the rest and Gaga is able to telepathically learn it? Yeah…I’m gonna go with no on that one. Total B.S. Truth be told, the film is more of a screenplay and editing mess than direction, but as the overseer of everything (and having a hand in the script himself), Cooper really deserves the bulk of the blame here at the end of the day. This just isn’t a very well-made film all-round. I’m somewhat surprised that Cooper and pop singer Lady Gaga managed to be lauded for their acting here, as I don’t think either one is entirely comfortably cast. In fact, Gaga probably comes off the better of the two. She’s miscast as someone who supposedly lacks confidence, as almost every bit of her performance suggests otherwise. However, for the most part she at least doesn’t seem out of her depth in a medium that isn’t her usual domain. In fact, in the film’s few moments where her character stands up for herself, she’s actually rather good. Also, for the first time ever, I actually heard her sing. What’s that? She’s a singer for a living? No, she makes terrible, disposable electronic pop music bullshit for a living. Yeah, she worked with Tony Bennett (who I can’t stand, so it’s useless to me), but here she does something really, really special. In her opening scene here singing the French classic ‘La Vie en Rose’, Gaga does some legit singing and absolutely blew me away. She sounded amazing. Her pop music is appalling wannabe Madonna nonsense (and Madonna’s got her beat all day long), which is a shame since she shows here she has actual pipes and could’ve been a heck of a singer. As for Cooper, well he strikes out both on the musical and acting front, surprisingly enough. His singing isn’t terrible (though he sure as hell botched his part of ‘Shallow’ at the Oscars, didn’t he?), but it sounds like he’s trying to ape several other singers’ voices without ever finding his own. Dylan is an obvious influence and probably not the brightest source for influence given that ‘good singing’ is a bit besides the point with Dylan. Meanwhile, it’s beyond obvious that he’s not really playing the guitar. Even to a non-musician like myself you can tell that his wannabe cock rock mannerisms and pretend playing just don’t mesh with the guitar sound coming out. Is it important? Yes, because it adds another layer to the lack of authenticity in his performance ‘coz all you’re seeing is a wannabe Eddie Vedder meets Bob Dylan by way of Kings of Leon. At first I kinda understood why Cooper mumbles and drawls his way through the role. It suits his character and helps to bridge a rather unlikely age gap for him to play brother to Sam Elliott, a man who looks old enough to be his grandfather. He sounds a bit like the man, by way of Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart” (And boy is there a lot of “Crazy Heart” in this version of “A Star is Born”). Unfortunately, the performance starts to grate on you, it’s too forced and unnatural. It gets to such a point of irritation that I started mocking back to the screen with an impersonation of it. So Cooper’s not convincing as a rocker, his performance isn’t overall convincing either in the character. He and Gaga do share pretty good chemistry as an on-screen couple though, even if some idiots in the press have taken that way too far to suggest something unseemly about it. So the film does have that going for it, and despite Cooper’s lack of singing ability, ‘Shallow’ does have a certain hook-y quality to it that can’t be denied.

It also has going for it an Oscar-nominated Sam Elliott giving one of his best-ever turns. He’s terrific, unfortunately he is a victim of the sloppy storytelling on show, as his character is sloppily introduced into the film that you don’t initially know what his role actually is. I doubt it’s by design, but if it is, it’s unnecessarily so. Elsewhere, an almost unrecognisable Andrew Dice Clay is rock-solid as Gaga’s dad, he’s a much better character actor than he is a comedian if you ask me. Fellow comedians Eddie Griffin and Dave Chappelle also strangely turn up in straight supporting turns, which only distracted me into wondering where in the hell Griffin has been since that time in the mid 00s where he appeared in a direct-to-DVD Steven Seagal film and I wondered where in the hell he had been since…well, you get the picture. Dude seems to disappear a lot (Chappelle has recently re-emerged with this and a somewhat controversial return to stand-up comedy).

Two leads not cast to their best advantage and choppy storytelling make it very difficult to get into this hoary old story. Sam Elliott is terrific (and probably robbed of an Oscar), Gaga shows she has more in her than pop nonsense. The film is just so-so.

Rating: C