This film is certainly well done. Robert DeNiro gives a good performance, but not nearly as great as Liza Minnelli. Often when Minnelli plays, she gives an aura of competence on the screen that forces the viewer to think, “Nobody else could have done this,” and as it were, truly nobody could. The sheer power of her performance alone is more than enough reason to watch this movie.
DeNiro plays as Jimmy, a tenacious and compulsive saxophone player that insists on getting what he wants, and what he wans is “1) Music, 2) Money, and 3) Women. But sometimes you find the right woman first, and then the numbers switch around.” He meets Francine (Minnelli), a singer who counterparts his persevering behavior enough to get him what he wants but hold her own. The two then go off to make their name in the music business any way they can, meaning eventually the music and their relationship start to tug them in different ways, and with conflict we have drama. Two hours and forty minutes of it, in fact.
The character of Jimmy is such that I couldn’t help but ask, “Are the viewers supposed to want him to succeed because he’s the hero, or are they supposed to want him to succeed because he’s going to keep trying anyways and we just want him to stop?” He tends to insist a bit too much, and watching his character is only worth the time when DeNiro’s playing off of Minnelli. The audience sympathizes with Francine because they can’t possibly imagine dealing with Jimmy, but since they can’t imagine dealing with Jimmy, they also have to wonder what the heck she’s doing with him. The two characters are constantly at edge, even when it seems they are going to reconcile.
Such a method of exposition is at least interesting to watch, but it’s largely stretched out and filled with more big-band music than one can possibly hope to sit through comfortably. The first two hours of the movie kept a good pace, but somewhere after the two hour mark the movie does a sort of Singin’ in the Rain-ish musical-in-a-musical that’s packed with so many layers of stories that it becomes confusing and, most importantly, completely useless. All of it has Minnelli, and Minnelli continues to sing afterwards. By the end of a good half-an-hour of her reaching crescendo after crescendo, one’s ears are in need of a rest… and it’s not like the movie has ended yet.
It’s a shame, in fact, that overall the movie feels displeasing to me, considering how strong the acting and directing are. Here is a movie that’s deserving of praise but very difficult to watch. See it if you can, take from it what you can get, but don’t expect to feel like watching it ever again.