The Lords of Flatbush director Martin Davidson and his sister/co-writer Arlene Davidson conceive some interesting scenes, such as the moment where a tone-deaf Word Man brings "On the Dark Side" to the band and Eddie revs up the misbegotten number into a bona fide hit, or a late-film trip to Vineland, New Jersey's Palace Depression, a grand estate made literally of junk, where a bummed-out Eddie unloads to Joann about his misunderstood musical masterpiece that the record company won't release. But unfortunately, the actors are not engaging enough to completely hide the fact that the story's constant crosscutting between two timelines effectively sucks the dramatic momentum out of both the past and the present.
The film has a strong cast, and they uniformly deliver solid performances when their characters are offstage (onstage, their lip-synching and fake guitar strumming leave something to be desired). Meanwhile, backup singer and Eddie's old flame Joann (Helen Schneider) keeps getting mysterious phone calls that lead her to wonder if Eddie is still alive and coming for her soon. Band manager Doc (Joe Pantoliano) is also in the nostalgia business, spinning golden oldies as a DJ at a tiny Jersey radio station and pining for those Cruisers royalties he foolishly signed away years ago. Bass player Sal (Matthew Laurance) has been doing a Mike Love-style nostalgia act for years, using the Cruisers name and playing Cruisers hits for appreciative audiences every week, getting lookalikes to fill in the gaps in the line-up.
Sensitive lyricist and keyboard player Frank "Word Man" Ridgeway (Tom Berenger) might have been most emotionally affected by Eddie's death, setting aside his literary dreams to become a high school English teacher. Maggie starts interviewing former band members and other folks associated with the Cruisers. The question of whether or not Eddie faked his own death lingers in the popular consciousness as well (the existence of a sequel subtitled "Eddie Lives!" makes the tension of this story thread a lot less compelling). The film employs a Citizen Kane-aping flashback structure, in which '80s entertainment reporter Maggie Foley (Ellen Barkin) tries to find out what happened to the missing recordings of the experimental second album that the band was working on prior to the accident. The original Eddie is a charming though unfortunately overambitious portrait of an early '60s Jersey Shore bar band that were on the verge of greatness when the distraught lead singer, Eddie Wilson (Michael Paré), drove his Chevy off a bridge. Still, I have to admit that the transfers MGM has licensed to Shout! Factory are great-looking and great-sounding, so if you're already one of the Cruisers converted, you are welcome to ignore what I have to say about the content and celebrate the stellar A/V quality instead.
Personally, I'm a little too young to have caught the first film during its pay cable heyday, so I don't have any nostalgic warm and fuzzies to mitigate what I see as the film's many weaknesses.
#Eddie and the cruisers movie
Like many movies that were in heavy rotation on HBO in the '80s, Eddie and the Cruisers has maintained a cult following ever since, which explains why the movie is getting a polished-up Blu-ray release paired with its belated, godawful sequel from 1989, Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives!. It was so popular that its soundtrack, anchored by the memorable rocker "On the Dark Side," eventually went quadruple platinum. There's something heartening about the way that the 1983 musical drama Eddie and the Cruisers bounced back from a bungled theatrical release to become a giant hit on HBO.
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