Eddie and the Cruisers (United States, 1983)
March 13, 2018
Warning: Extreme spoilers. I will write openly about the
ending. Okay, the movie came out 35 years ago but don’t say you haven’t been
warned…
To me, Eddie and the
Cruisers has always seemed like a missed opportunity. The premise is
pregnant with possibilities: an investigative reporter (Ellen Barkin), eager to
capitalize on the resurgence of a defunct rock band, decides to look into the
supposed death of the lead singer. Did Eddie Wilson (Michael Paré) really die
in a 1963 automobile accident? No body was found, after all. Or did he fake his
own death as a way of fading from the limelight? Drawing on real-life
conspiracy theories that have surrounded the untimely demises of popular music
stars from Elvis to Prince, Eddie and the
Cruisers asks this fascinating “What if?” question. Unfortunately, the
answers it comes up with are less than compelling.
The film can be divided into two pieces. In the current
timeframe, which is the year when the movie was made (1983), everyone who was
once in Eddie’s orbit has moved on. We catch up with them as Barkin’s Maggie
Foley tracks them down. The backstory, which chronicles the time from the band’s
rise to Eddie’s “death”, takes us back two decades. In terms of narrative
thrust, the segments from the 1960s work considerably better than those in the
1980s. Although there’s a generic aspect to The Cruisers’ arc, there are some
nice touches. The “current” portion, however, is trite with hard-to-swallow
character evolutions and a “mystery” that is neither compelling nor satisfying
in its resolution.
The movie is (mostly) presented from the perspective of “Wordman”
Frank Ridgeway (Tom Berenger), a lyricist who joins the group while it’s still
playing clubs on the Jersey Shore (the Springsteen allusions come fast and
frequently). Before Frank’s admission, the Cruisers are comprised of five
members: front-man Eddie; his main squeeze, backup singer Joann Carlino (Helen
Schneider); bassist Sal Amato (Matthew Laurance); saxophonist Wendell Newton
(Michael “Tunes” Antunes); and drummer Kenny Hopkins (David Wilson). Also
hanging around is their manager, Doc Robbins (Joe Pantoliano). Following the
success of the Spingsteen-esque song, “On the Dark Side” (a tune that sounds
exactly like something the Boss might have done, albeit ten years prior to the
earliest date when he would have done it), The Cruisers hit the big time, and
that’s when the problems begin. Sal and Eddie feud, Wendell dies of a drug
overdose, and the growing attraction between Frank and Joann threaten the
fabric of the band. Then comes the fateful night when Eddie’s car goes into the
water.
Twenty years later, Frank is teaching high school English when
Maggie locates him. Strangely, he doesn’t look a day older than he did in 1963.
Her questions awaken his curiosity. He goes to see Sal’s nostalgia-driven reinvention
of “The Cruisers” with an Eddie-lookalike. He takes a trip to Atlantic City,
where Kenny is a casino dealer. He re-connects with Doc and, as the movie
lurches toward its climax, Joann walks back into his life. Like Frank, she
looks strangely like she did when she was in her 20s. (Apparently, director
Martin Davidson wasn’t overly concerned about applying sufficient makeup to
make the two-decade gap believable.)
Of course, Eddie isn’t really dead, although we don’t learn that until the final scene
and the characters never figure it out. The title character’s resurrection is
intended as a surprise but it’s anything but that. (Sort of like bringing back
Spock in a movie called The Search for Spock wouldn’t be a shocker.) It feels more like a cheap gimmick than
anything else, although it paved the way for the 1989 sequel, Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives!
Although Michael Paré’s dramatic performance leaves
something to be desired, he captures the intensity and charisma of a rock
singer and combines it with a near-perfect “look.” The only time Eddie and the Crusiers shines is when
the band is playing, which unfortunately represents a distinct minority of the
running time. Tom Berenger doesn’t embarrass himself, which is more than can be
said for many of the other actors, whose performances range from the lower end
of mediocre to high school stage play-bad. Ellen Barkin subsequently admitted
that she thought the script was terrible but was convinced to do the movie by an
agent who argued it was too much money to pass up.
Although the movie gets the ‘80s right (one would hope this
would be the case since that’s when it was filmed), it mostly botches the ‘60s,
at least insofar as the music is concerned. Pretty much every song played by
The Cruisers sounds like it was written in the 1980s. The argument is that the
group was “ahead of its time” but that seems like a lazy way of saying that the
filmmakers were incapable of crafting era-appropriate music. “In the Dark Side”
got radio airplay, making it all the way to #7 on the Billboard Hot 100. Like
another early 1980s relic, Xanadu, Eddie and the Cruisers boasted better
record sales than ticket sales.
The film isn’t completely without merit. As previously mentioned, the music sequences are well-made and there’s an energy evident when The Cruisers are playing that’s absent from the rest of the production. Some of the material about conspiracy theories and Sal’s resurrected band echo real-life aspects of the music business. But most of the other stuff is bad soap opera and the resolution of a mystery about who’s pretending to be Eddie in 1983 is cheesy and doesn’t make a lot of sense. Whatever goodwill the movie builds up during its first 85 minutes is thrown away in the idiotic, anticlimactic final ten.
Eddie and the Cruisers (United States, 1983)
Cast: Tom Berenger, Michael Paré, Joe Pantoliano, Matthew Laurance, Helen Schneider, David Wilson, Michael “Tunes” Antunes, Ellen Barkin
Home Release Date: 2018-03-13
Screenplay: Martin Davidson & Arlene Davidson, based on the novel by P.F. Kluge
Cinematography: Fred Murphy
Music: John Cafferty
U.S. Distributor: Embassy Pictures
U.S. Release Date: 1983-09-23
MPAA Rating: "PG" (Profanity, Sexual Content, Drugs)
Genre: Drama
Subtitles: none
Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
- Sliver (1993)
- Supervized (2019)
- (There are no more worst movies of Tom Berenger)
- (There are no more better movies of Michael Paré)
- (There are no more worst movies of Michael Paré)
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