When Amy Schumer was roasting the film "Being the Ricardos" at the Oscars a couple of years ago, she was making fun of Aaron Sorkin for writing a screenplay about the most iconic female comedian of all time that didn't have a single funny moment. She compared it to making a biopic about Michael Jordan and only showing the bus trips between games.
Bradley Cooper, pay attention. Why did you choose to make a movie about Leonard Bernstein, arguably one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, and then focus on all of the most mundane aspects of his life? Do we need yet another movie about a famous person bogged down with scene after scene of them squabbling with their spouse? If you don't already know why Bernstein is so legendary, you're not going to learn it here. You might not even come away from the movie knowing what Bernstein wrote, because the film tosses out titles quickly and casually as it's rushing to get to the next scene of Cooper overacting and Carey Mulligan looking strained as all long-suffering wives in all biopics ever made must do. You don't see him developing any projects or working with collaborators. The movie implies that he was disdainful of his success in musical theater despite revolutionizing it with "West Side Story." But then why did he spend so much time working in it if he hated it? Why weren't we at least treated with someone doing a cameo appearance as Stephen Sondheim? Why why why?
And then to top it all off, the last quarter of the film is a dreary slog as we watch Mulligan slowly die of cancer. I despise it when movies show characters slowly dying of cancer. It freaks me out, and I hate it. I know this woman actually did die of cancer, but I don't want to watch it. That's more my problem than it is the movie's, because that's what happened, but still.
Cooper's screenplay is terrible, and because of that, nothing else about the movie has a chance. Mulligan is quite good, but she's hampered by the material. Cooper will be nominated for an Oscar, and might win, because the Academy loves nothing more than rewarding actors for playing famous people while heaped under prosthetic makeup. To the film's credit, for once the makeup is quite good. Usually biopic makeup makes the actors look like their faces are about to melt off, but here the effect is pretty seamless.
Someone clearly told Bradley Cooper that Warren Beatty is the only person to ever score Oscar nominations for producing, directing, writing, and acting in the same film, and Cooper said "Hold my beer." He's so desperately hankering for an Oscar for this film that you can smell red carpet wafting from the screen.
Grade: C-
Bradley Cooper, pay attention. Why did you choose to make a movie about Leonard Bernstein, arguably one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, and then focus on all of the most mundane aspects of his life? Do we need yet another movie about a famous person bogged down with scene after scene of them squabbling with their spouse? If you don't already know why Bernstein is so legendary, you're not going to learn it here. You might not even come away from the movie knowing what Bernstein wrote, because the film tosses out titles quickly and casually as it's rushing to get to the next scene of Cooper overacting and Carey Mulligan looking strained as all long-suffering wives in all biopics ever made must do. You don't see him developing any projects or working with collaborators. The movie implies that he was disdainful of his success in musical theater despite revolutionizing it with "West Side Story." But then why did he spend so much time working in it if he hated it? Why weren't we at least treated with someone doing a cameo appearance as Stephen Sondheim? Why why why?
And then to top it all off, the last quarter of the film is a dreary slog as we watch Mulligan slowly die of cancer. I despise it when movies show characters slowly dying of cancer. It freaks me out, and I hate it. I know this woman actually did die of cancer, but I don't want to watch it. That's more my problem than it is the movie's, because that's what happened, but still.
Cooper's screenplay is terrible, and because of that, nothing else about the movie has a chance. Mulligan is quite good, but she's hampered by the material. Cooper will be nominated for an Oscar, and might win, because the Academy loves nothing more than rewarding actors for playing famous people while heaped under prosthetic makeup. To the film's credit, for once the makeup is quite good. Usually biopic makeup makes the actors look like their faces are about to melt off, but here the effect is pretty seamless.
Someone clearly told Bradley Cooper that Warren Beatty is the only person to ever score Oscar nominations for producing, directing, writing, and acting in the same film, and Cooper said "Hold my beer." He's so desperately hankering for an Oscar for this film that you can smell red carpet wafting from the screen.
Grade: C-