Eddie and the Cruisers

Pare lacks charisma as Eddie, but the Bruce Springsteen-like music (by John Cafferty, who dubs Eddie's singing voice, and his Beaver Brown Band) was good enough to put the soundtrack album in the Top 40 charts.

Eddie And The Cruisers is a hodgepodge of seemingly unmarketable ingredients: a complicated flashback structure, oblique nods to Elvis Presley conspiracy theories and The Beach Boys’ unreleased opus Smile, and anachronistic Bruce Springsteen-style frat-rock.

Vivid, full of conviction and more than a little foolish at times.

It seemed to me that what Eddie and the Cruisers aspired to do was certainly worth doing. The problem is that it finally lacks the storytelling resources to tell enough of an intriguing story about a musical mystery man. [30 Sept 1983, p.E2]

A few times, when Eddie and the Cruisers are making their music, the movie begins to hook you. But less-than-skillful plotting always lets you off the hook, and the ending is a letdown and a tease. [26 Sept 1983, p.6]

Eddie and the Cruisers is all buildup and no payoff.

A mish-mash of a film, combining elements of the ongoing nostalgia for rock music of previous decades with an unworkable and laughable mystery plotline.