Springsteen

I’m sure few will disagree with me when I say there are far too many biopics coming out of Hollywood nowadays. And whilst a fairly good one will come around eventually (see last year’s Better Man), the majority of them feel mostly empty. 

Springsteen, based on the life of the Boss himself, unfortunately follows the sub-par storytelling trends of most painfully mediocre biopics. Whilst Jeremy Allen White puts in a very impressive performance as Bruce Springsteen and the rest of the cast prove to be equally as talented, the film still manages to feel incredibly hollow and, quite frankly, pretty dull. 

The film suffers a lot from its slow pacing and seemingly aimless script. It’s a movie that feels like it really wants to dig deep on Springsteen’s struggles with mental illness and how that affects his art and the people around him, but it never presents us with a fully rounded version of him. Like a lot of biopics, it feels like it expects us to bring our own knowledge of Bruce to the film, rather than allowing us to explore a well-realised character. 

I also found the way it explores Bruce’s depression and his relationship with his father to be quite clunky. There were moments where it felt like the movie really wanted me to be crying my eyes out, but instead I found said moments to feel incredibly cheap and poorly executed. 

Springsteen is simply another example of a misguided biopic that I personally feel offers nothing of value to my understanding of the real person behind the music. These music biopics really need to start taking more risks and doing different things because right now, a lot of them feel like they’re blending into one grey, lifeless mush. At least the Academy still enjoys them.