EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS. Directed by Martin Davidson; written by Martin Davidson and Arlene Davidson; produced by Joseph Brooks and Robert K. Lifton for Embassy Pictures. Starring Tom Berenger and Michael Pare. Rated PG (minimal offensive language).
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Good rock and roll movies are as scarce as bad vibes at Woodstock. So, although Eddie and the Cruisers is a little pretentious and disappointing, it's worth seeing if you're a rock fan.
It has an intriguing story and some good original music. But the musical scenes are much more satisfying than the dramatic ones.
Action in the movie moves back and forth from the early sixties to the present. In 1963, Eddie Wilson and his band, the Cruisers, are headed for the big time on the strength of one hit album. But before another album can be released, Eddie drives his convertible off a bridge. With their lead singer and main inspiration gone, the Cruisers disband.
In 1981, the Cruisers' music is enjoying a revival on rock radio stations. A TV reporter starts to ask questions of the surviving band members. She is interested in some mysterious facts—Eddie's body was never found, and the tapes for the second album have been missing since the day after the accident.
Unfortunately, the ghost story elements don't turn out as interesting as they sound in the trailers and the mystery's solution isn't hard to figure out.
The story's past and present segments are interspersed with lots of music from the Cruisers' rehearsals and performances. In these scenes, the movie comes alive. The songs are good and Pare does a great job as Eddie. Rough and often inarticulate off-stage, when the music starts Eddie has enough charisma to make the Cruisers' popularity quite believable.
Frank Ridgeway (Berenger) wrote the band's lyrics then and teaches high school English now. After the reporter interviews him, he decides to look up all the old Cruisers.
There are ample hints that this is an important personal odyssey for Ridgeway. He supposedly has never really grown up and can't, we are made to understand, until he comes to terms with his past as a Cruiser and with Eddie's disappearance.
But we don't learn enough about him to flesh out the bare outline. Ridgeway could have been the most interesting character in the movie, and if he had been, the movie might have lived up to its potential.
As it is, the story ends up being very frustrating. The idea of the past influencing the present is a good one, especially when the past is the '60's—a period of extraordinary impact on many people now approaching middle age, as well as on society as a whole. But Eddie is not the movie to explore this influence in any meaningful way.
The music will bring the younger fans to the theater. They would probably be disappointed if more time were taken from the music to give Ridgeway's mid-life crisis more substance, but as a contemporary of his (who likes rock music, too) I would have liked to know him better.
October 5, 1983