Ally is a waitress and aspiring singer-songwriter who has been told repeatedly that her nose is the wrong shape for the music industry. After the concert, he staggers into the nearest bar, where he spots Ally, played by Stefani Germanotta, aka Lady Gaga. He gives everything he’s got on stage, which means that he is left with nothing but the piercing whistle of tinnitus, and a desperate need for strong liquor. We first see Jackson in concert, knocking back pills and booze before playing a guitar riff so loud that it punches you in the chest. But Cooper does turn in a powerful performance as Jackson Maine, a frazzled rocker whose grungy cowboy image is equal parts Eddie Vedder, Neil Young, Johnny Cash and Jim Morrison, and whose low, slurred speaking voice suggests that he has been taking elocution lessons from Sylvester Stallone. He isn’t as convincing in the role as Kris Kristofferson was in the 1976 version with Barbra Streisand – not surprisingly, considering that one of the two men was in The Hangover, and the other co-wrote one of Janis Joplin’s biggest hits. If it has anything to say, then, maybe it’s just that Cooper would have loved being a musician if acting hadn’t worked out. But as there is almost nothing in it that wasn’t in the previous iterations, it’s hard to see what prompted this particular re-re-remake, and even harder to think about it without the term ‘vanity project’ springing to mind.Ī Star Is Born is directed, co-written and co-produced by Bradley Cooper, who plays a self-destructive but divinely talented and searingly principled rock god. Charting the turbulent relationship between a singer on the rise and another in decline, it’s the fourth film to use that same plot and title, so it could be categorised as a remake of a remake of a remake. But that’s a risky refrain for a melodrama that doesn’t have much to say itself. Throughout A Star Is Born, people keep insisting that it’s not talent that counts in the music business, it’s having something to say.
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