Movie: Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (PG-13)
My rating: ♦♦◊◊◊
Sitting in the movie theater watching Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere I couldn’t help but feel underwhelmed by the lack of a point.
The movie, which stars Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) as music legend Bruce Springsteen, follows the musician as he makes his album Nebraska in 1982.
Considering that people speculated whether White could duplicate Springsteen’s voice, I was curious if the singing would be noticeably different. While White’s singing did sound different from Springsteen, he was able to get close to the icon’s sound and had a sufficiently good voice for the role.
As far as acting goes White and the other actors did a great job portraying their characters’ feelings and emotions.
Although the actors were able to accurately convey the characters’ emotions, the only emotion this movie brought while watching was boredom.
The filmmakers went with the approach of making the movie an “anti-biopic,” a subgenre of biographical movies that differs from the traditional biopic by focusing on one time period of a person’s life rather than a whole life story. I would argue this was an unfortunate choice for the movie.
The movie could’ve been made better if it stuck to the traditional biographical movie format. The time period in Springsteen’s life in which the movie is set, despite being a major point in his life with him facing personal struggles, is just utterly uninteresting to watch. Making the movie about his whole life or even choosing a different time in his life could’ve made the movie more interesting.
The movie does give some flashbacks to some traumatic moments from Springsteen’s childhood, but overall it doesn’t give us enough backstory or connection to Springsteen for us to care, quite frankly. The main theme of the movie is emotional and melancholy, yet it does not give us enough to connect with it. Let’s face it–if it isn’t a comedy, then an emotional connection is crucial to a movie, and this film doesn’t have it. It seems to have a lack of plot or overall point for the audience.
This being said, if you aren’t already a fan of Springsteen’s music I wouldn’t recommend you watch it. If you are a fan of Springsteen’s music, I would still advise you to keep your interest in him limited to listening to his music and to not waste your time on this movie. At the end, I just wanted it to deliver me from tedious boredom.
