Obviously, from the other comments here, lots of other people adore this movie, and you should probably take their word for it. But I'm partly left thinking - good gravy, what are these people ON?
OK, so it's a biography - except that it completely rewrites the guy's life. He wasn't married to Ruby Keeler (et al). He didn't save Warner Brothers. So you know less about Jolson when it ends than you did when it started.
I guess your response to this depends on how you can take Larry Parks. He's like Robert Downey as Chaplin: he works very very hard, but the essence is simply wrong. Parks has no grandeur or real assurance: 'on-stage', he looks like a low-wattage Jolson impersonator, and 'off-stage' his character development is uninspired. There is no real roguery in him; in the later scenes, he seems like a Jaycee pretending to be Jimmy Cagney.
Basically, I don't think Parks is a very inspired actor, and he's a very gauche mover: Jolson gestures, Parks throws his arms about on cue. (Tho' the poor guy had Jolson himself breathing down the back of his neck, so the shoot must have been pretty uncomfortable.) (And draughty) I never, for a minute, thought that I was watching the real Jolson - except in those famous longshots, where apparently it IS the real Jolson Star quality, eh!
If you ask me, as so often in musicals, it's the supporting cast that makes this work. Demarest is very good, and I like the Joelsen parents (tho' they remind me a little of the parents in "take the money and run").
I'm Generation X, so a lot of the sentimental / nostalgic stuff goes right past me. The lip-synched blackface stuff goes on and on in tight close-up; to me, it seems like some kind of surreal nightmare vision rather than light entertainment. Like drag, only much, much weirder. (I'm trying to imagine a movie about a black entertainer who makes his living by parodying violent, ignorant, superstitious, and venal orthodox Jews.)
I can't imagine watching it again; I'd probably watch a real Jolson movie for preference. For a backstage musical, I think I prefer "Me and my Gal" or "My Gal Sal" or "I'll see you in my dreams".
OK, so it's a biography - except that it completely rewrites the guy's life. He wasn't married to Ruby Keeler (et al). He didn't save Warner Brothers. So you know less about Jolson when it ends than you did when it started.
I guess your response to this depends on how you can take Larry Parks. He's like Robert Downey as Chaplin: he works very very hard, but the essence is simply wrong. Parks has no grandeur or real assurance: 'on-stage', he looks like a low-wattage Jolson impersonator, and 'off-stage' his character development is uninspired. There is no real roguery in him; in the later scenes, he seems like a Jaycee pretending to be Jimmy Cagney.
Basically, I don't think Parks is a very inspired actor, and he's a very gauche mover: Jolson gestures, Parks throws his arms about on cue. (Tho' the poor guy had Jolson himself breathing down the back of his neck, so the shoot must have been pretty uncomfortable.) (And draughty) I never, for a minute, thought that I was watching the real Jolson - except in those famous longshots, where apparently it IS the real Jolson Star quality, eh!
If you ask me, as so often in musicals, it's the supporting cast that makes this work. Demarest is very good, and I like the Joelsen parents (tho' they remind me a little of the parents in "take the money and run").
I'm Generation X, so a lot of the sentimental / nostalgic stuff goes right past me. The lip-synched blackface stuff goes on and on in tight close-up; to me, it seems like some kind of surreal nightmare vision rather than light entertainment. Like drag, only much, much weirder. (I'm trying to imagine a movie about a black entertainer who makes his living by parodying violent, ignorant, superstitious, and venal orthodox Jews.)
I can't imagine watching it again; I'd probably watch a real Jolson movie for preference. For a backstage musical, I think I prefer "Me and my Gal" or "My Gal Sal" or "I'll see you in my dreams".