Review: Jersey Boys

Jersey Boys

Bechdel test: No
Feminist points: 
Movie: 

Jersey Boys is the story of the rise and fall of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Alternative title: Goodfellas meets That thing you do.

 

The biopic, we’ve seen it so many times now, I almost brought out my check list, prison – check, marriage – check, divorce – check, suicide – check, fame – check, hard times – check, drugs – actually no.

 

It’s hard to fathom how a movie with so many important female roles, still feels old-fashioned Hollywood-y, but I think I’ve figured some of it out. According to Tommy Devito (Vincent Piazza, the bad guy), there are two types of women, and they both break your balls. Luckily for me, I managed to count FIVE types of women in the world of Jersey Boys, they are as follow, ‘the mother’, ‘the daughter’, ‘the wife’, ‘the girlfriend’ and ‘the groupie’, just like in real life. Another aspect on why the deep-rooted gender stereotypes are so cemented can be that the conservative director is 84 years old, but hey, that doesn’t explain Million Dollar Baby, Changeling and The Bridges of Madison County. So I’ll just blame the writers of the stage musical. At least the music was great.

Don’t miss: Charming little cameo from director Clint Eastwood when Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen) watches an old western starring the director on TV.

Don’t miss 2: Is Renee Marino a younger version of Isabella Sciorra?

-D

Review: Walk of Shame

Bechdel test: Yes
Feminist points: 
Movie: 

Meghan (Elizabeth Banks) is a local news anchor who’s on her way to the top with a job lined up at the national TV channel CNB. After a drunken night, she’s stranded in downtown L.A. without a way to get home, and she’s only got 8 hours to get to work and impress CNB.

As you can imagine, Walk of Shame is not the most nuanced movie. Apparently there are two types of women: good girls and bad girls. Good girls are upper middle class TV news anchors and bad girls are prostitutes.

On her walk of shame, she manages to get a ride from a cab driver who wants 4 lap dances as payment for the ride, and when she refuses, threatens her with a gun. It’s always fun when someone threatens with violence to get sexual enjoyment. After that she runs into the stereotypical black drug dealer, and his two friends. They are the typical bad guys who are actually quite friendly and helpful. I guess that’s how you can get away with such a terrible stereotype (hey, they’re actually nice and friendly).

I’m not going to go through all the terrible things that are wrong with this film, but just leave you with the sad truth that, THE JOKE of the movie is that our heroine Meghan is a good girl until she puts on a “slutty” dress, after that she gets mistaken for a stripper, a prostitute (several times) and a temptress. Unfortunately, this is the only joke, and it ain’t funny.

-D