Film Review - A Star is Born (2018)

This is the 4th version of A Star is Born to be made the last one being in 1976 with Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson this time Bradley Cooper stars and directs and co-writes and produces this version and plays Jackson Maine an alcoholic country singer who meets Ally (Lady Gaga) in a bar and discovers her talent for singing and decides to help her launch a career in the music industry.

I have been very torn on this movie since I saw it but after thinking about it a little bit I think that in all honesty it is okay nothing great but nothing overly horrible either and a lot of that comes down to Lady Gaga’s performance she is a genuine star here and owns every scene she’s in and when watching her in this movie it feels like playing this character just comes as easy to her as putting on one of her personas that she developed early on in her career and I hope she does more movie roles in the future.

Where this falls over for me is Bradley Cooper both in his direction and his performance and I’ll start first with the performance side and it really felt like to me that he was emulating Kris Kristofferson from that 1976 version as he has the scruffy beard, the chest hair and the slightly midwestern twinge in his voice and after a while I kinda got sick of watching him drink every kind of alcohol, clash with people on his tour and sing a bunch of songs now this is the material from what I’ve read I haven’t seen the other versions but it kind of wore out its welcome for me after a while.

As for his direction it was okay but there are an awful lot of close ups some of them very close up indeed and some of them of Lady Gaga made me a little uncomfortable to watch especially during some of the romance scenes where Cooper is touching Ms Gaga an awful lot now I’m not prudish in any way but I sat there thinking “Okay can we call cut and not go so close in, it’s a little uncomfortable to watch like this.”

Lastly the script as it focuses more and more on Jackson’s decline it sends the overall film into a decline in its back half and for me I really began to lose interest and I was checking my watch on a few occasions which is a bit of a shame but these things happen.

And so that was A Star is Born and its okay and that’s really due to Lady Gaga’s performance the rest of it really did very little for me I’m afraid, 2 out of 5.