Crazy Heart

Released: 2009
Drama
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robert Duvall
Director: Scott Cooper
Running Time: 112 minutes

The breakdown: This is a bad character study of a man who used to be a big country music star, but now is a has been alcoholic who goes touring around the country's bars and bowling alleys to make a living.  Along the way, he meets a young small town reporter who wants to do an interview with him, he agrees, and they become romantically linked.


This wasn't as good a movie as it was touted to be.  I mean, Jeff Bridges got an OSCAR for this.  Most likely because of his body of work and his age and I don't really think it had anything to do with his performance for this film.  And I like Jeff Bridges, especially in his younger days, when he was really quite attractive. 
Like I said this is a bad character study film.  Bridges is a bitter washed up alcoholic who's slowly killing himself with no sleep, lots of booze and smoking, plus a terrible diet and overall unhealthy lifestyle.  He's lonely, depressed, and tired.  He had a son once with a woman, but after he was 4 he lost all contact with him and hasn't tried to reconnect since.  He travels from town to town, boozing it up, sleeping with random women, and being miserable.  He barely shows up for gigs, he's not reliable, or friendly, and he's broke.  He pesters his agent to get him better work and his agent tells him his protege wants him to write some new music for him.  He refuses and is jealous that his protege is doing much better than he did.  His protege isn't the bad guy he's made out to be (though, he's played by Colin Farrell and I can't stand him).  His protege is out on tour and asks, through their mutual manager, if Bridges can open for him.  Bridges proudly says no.

So he keeps playing little hole in the wall dive bars and eventually meets Gyllenhaal's character.  She's responsible, a single mother, and smart.  I'm not sure why her character is attracted to a man who's obviously on his way to the grave, plus he runs around looking like trailer trash most of the movie, unbuckled belt with his pants open, sweaty, scruffy beard, and long hair to boot.  They get involved and of course, things do not go the way he had planned.  I won't ruin it for you if you want to see this one, but my recommendation is to skip it.

This movie was trying to hop on the same path as "The Wrestler" but wasn't nearly as effective a character study, and not really entertaining at all.  If you do want to see a really good character study, check out the original plot "The Wrestler" released several years earlier.  It's the same idea as this movie, but done so so much better.

I give this one 1 1/2 ticket stubs out of 5 for too much singing from Jeff Bridges, annoying Colin Farrell being in the movie (though his character was fine), an unbelievable romance, and an overall boring movie.  No surprises, no drama, no zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, ahem, like I say it's boring.  Skip it.