From Blue-Collar Boys to Doo-Wop Sensation: A Band's Rise and Fall
7 / 10
In a year in which one pop-songbook show after another has thudded and died, 'Jersey Boys,' a shrink-wrapped musical biography of the pop group the Four Seasons, passes as silver instead of as the chrome-plated jukebox that it is. Unlike the recent Broadway flops, this show has the advantage of featuring singers that actually sound like the singers they are portraying and a technology-enhanced band that approximates the original sound of their music. Scriptwriters Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice provide some likably sassy dialogue as they chart the evolution of their main characters from street kids in the urban wastelands of New Jersey to pop gods enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But while 'Jersey Boys' is based on fact, it rarely leaps over the cliches of a regulation grit-to-glamour blueprint.
.gif?width=300)
