Re: A STAR IS BORN is BARBRA's HIGHEST GROSSING MOVIE! - ENOUGH ALREADY!
Well, whether something makes money isn't really a true measure of its merit. I mean, for decades Jacqueline Susann was listed in the
Guiness Book of World Records as the best selling author of all time. Does that mean her books are actually
good? Mmmm....not really.
The score for this reeeeeaaaaalllllyyyyy looooooooooooong movie is very dated (in a bad way)
(Queen Bee, Baby??)...though there's a few pretty songs.
The problem with the story for a female star is the male lead is actually a much more interesting character than Esther. Esther's a good singer, and a good wife. Zzzzzzzz. And the way Streisand insisted on editing the movie goes in the wrong direction; emphasizing a million needless closeups of herself, cutting away from Kris Kristofferson's reactions, etc. And MY GOD, that ending, where she sings for 10 minutes in extreme closeup!! It's All Esther, All the Time!
Her essential character isn't even that developed. This Esther's not exactly a struggling artist, having a beautiful house in the Hollywood Hills, singing gigs at a packed club, and jobs recording commercial jingles. It's not even as if the character is particularly hungry for success. She's just kind of warm...and blobby.
NOTE: I will say, of course, Streisand's singing is practically peerless, and she delivers superbly as a vocalist here. It's just everything else that's wrong.
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rascal67
8 years ago
... the way Streisand insisted on editing the movie goes in the wrong direction; emphasizing a million needless closeups of herself, cutting away from Kris Kristofferson's reactions, etc. And MY GOD, that ending, where she sings for 10 minutes in extreme closeup!! It's All Esther, All the Time!
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If anything, I do like this film for the cool 70's fix that it is. The concert scenes are very much alive and the film can be worth seeing just for these sequences and Streisand's singing alone. I agree that the film was a vanity project for Streisand and was to feed her narcissism and massive ego; but for some reason it connected with many and was a massive smash hit.
The film is uneven—like another poster has commented—and Streisand can come over as a tad cloying and phony in some of her scenes, and boy are some of them drawn out in parts. It was all about a self-important showcase for her, as though we are supposed to actually care about her struggling artist and then stardom rise and love for John Norman Howard, as though what they had was the most "real" thing ever. Gimme a break! It did need some tighter editing and input from other film technical professionals to help put it all together, but it appears like they weren't allowed. Her and Jon Peters just got lucky with the films extraordinary success, as I don't quite feel it was that deserved, due to how flawed it is.
Don't eat the whole ones! Those are for the guests. 🍪
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