In his review, Lane states that “ideally, Cooper’s film would end after the first hour,” or “after the first night that Jackson Maine (Cooper) and Ally (Lady Gaga) spend together. They don’t have sex; they just hang out. She gets into a fight, and he buys frozen peas to soothe her swollen hand. He listens to her sing in a parking lot, then drops her off at home, where she lives with her father (Andrew Dice Clay).
My response: That first hour is pure magic and serves up a film that feels infectiously lovable. I love Gaga and Cooper’s chemistry in these scenes, and Andrew Dice Clay damn near steals the show – he and his Italian-American buddies have such a good-natured vibe in their scenes that, despite the obvious caricaturing, it works.
My response: Cooper manages to practically destroy the narrative drive of the initial hour. He clearly needs to learn a thing or two about how to structure a film properly. The film suddenly switches gears, a lot of character and story development is lost by the abrupt flash-forwarding in the story. All of a sudden, without much explanation, Gaga’s Ally is a star and Cooper’s Jackson, quite literally, pisses his pants at the Grammys.
“In striving to make the whole thing rough and rooted, Cooper slakes our need for the apparently authentic, and yet the story he tells, with its sudden shock of fame, is little more than a fairy tale.”
Contribute
Hire me
Advertise Donate Team Contact Privacy Policy
