Jersey Boys (2014) on Netflix
R20142h 14mBiographyDramaMusic
Tommy DeVito sings with The Variety Trio in Belleville, New Jersey. The mobster Gyp DeCarlo takes a personal interest in Frankie Castelluccio, a barber's son known for his singing voice.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.8/1038,662 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes51%
Trailer
Plot summary
Frankie Castelluccio is a barber's son in Belleville, New Jersey, known for his singing voice, and the mobster Gyp DeCarlo takes a personal interest in him. Tommy DeVito performs with his brother Nicky and Nick Massi as The Variety Trio, and a robbery attempt lands Tommy in prison for six months. When he returns, he puts Frankie, now calling himself Frankie Valli, in front of the group as lead singer. Frankie meets Mary Delgado at a show and marries her. With Nicky gone and the group renamed The Four Lovers, Tommy's friend Joe Pesci points him to the songwriter Bob Gaudio, who hears Frankie sing and joins. Demos bring no interest until the producer Bob Crewe signs them, and a bowling alley sign gives the group its name, The Four Seasons.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Jersey Boys (2014)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Valli, Gaudio and DeVito were arrested in Ohio in 1965, but at the Ohio State Fair in Columbus, not in Cleveland as the film suggests; Brickman and Elice moved the arrest as artistic license, tying the event that began the group's fall to their Hall of Fame reunion 25 years later.
- Eastwood sought to cast actors from the play itself rather than more marketable film stars, refusing the pressure he felt to cast famous leads: "You've got people who've done 1,200 performances; how much better can you know a character?" Broadway's John Lloyd Young was chosen over West End's Ryan Molloy, although Valli's personal favorite was Molloy.
SPOILER
Valli's daughter Francine did eventually die of a reported drug overdose, but in 1980, thirteen years after he recorded "Can't Take My Eyes Off You". Gaudio acknowledged that the film juxtaposes two different timelines, hence why Francine's age jumps from a child to a teenager to a young adult.- DeVito denied virtually all of the claims made by Nick Massi in the film about his underwear habits, towel usage and an incident where he allegedly urinated in the sink, saying "I was probably the cleanest guy there."
- Barry Belson, who appears in only one scene giving the group its breakthrough radio airplay, was based on Joey Reynolds, who had introduced "Sherry" while working at WPOP in Hartford, Connecticut; Reynolds deeply resented being replaced by the fictional Belson.
- Although Eastwood enjoyed the script he asked for a rewrite, noting that the version "was missing a lot of things", which was considered unusual for a director who had become somewhat notorious for using first drafts as the eventual script.
- The film understated the amount of debt DeVito had saddled the band with in the late 1960s: the $662,000 to $1,000,000 number cited in the script was actually closer to $2,000,000.
