This film has the conversational dexterity and comedy of early Woody Allen films, the sadness of Lost in Translation, and the appealingly self-referential celebrity heft of Notting Hill. It is Baumbach, Sandler and Clooney at the top of their games, in a game where the audience is very much invited to play.
It doesn’t quite reach the heights of Part One, but this is still a highly entertaining display of what musical theatre can do on screen with top level performances and a true affection for the world-building.
This hybrid never feels quite cohesive enough, the pace somehow both rushed and yet too slow. One feels Vanderbilt’s panic at the enormity of the topic. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot to admire.
Die My Love is simply too odd to appeal to everyone – but anyone familiar with the despair induced by listening on repeat to “I like to eat apples and bananas”, while wondering where their life, identity and bodily autonomy have gone, will find truth, if not solace, in its singularity.
The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White plays Springsteen in a performance that hits all the right beats, including some enjoyably sweaty, raspy musical set pieces (White sings the numbers himself), without ever elevating the role to anything greater.
This dazzling array of top tier actors have to spend most of their time discussing how bonkers the totally sane Lo seems, and so they never get past two-dimensional characterisation no matter how hard they try.
The script for unconventional romantic comedy A Big Bold Beautiful Journey spent some time on Hollywood’s Black List, where well-liked but not yet picked up screenplays sometimes linger for years. It’s a shame it didn’t just stay there.
