A Star is Born review: Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper sparkle in the remake of a classic

To put it bluntly, there’s a million reasons why Lady Gaga needs A Star is Born to succeed.

Despite her now legendary status as one of this generation’s most influential pop stars, Stefani Germanotta didn’t receive unanimous praise for her last album, Joanne, and singers who take a serious stab at acting rarely pull it off (did somebody say ‘Madonna’?). To do so in yet another remake of A Star is Born (the third since 1937) builds up even more pressure, drawing inevitable comparisons between Lady Gaga and the legendary starlets who shone in previous versions of the classic Hollywood tale, including Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand.

It’s within this context that Lady Gaga’s debut as a lead actress takes place, but is the birth of Germanotta the Hollywood star a painful misstep or one that pushes her over the edge into full on glory?

Although she’s no stranger to applause, we’ll make it clear from the outset that Gaga deserves plenty more for her performance as Ally. Avoiding the kind of clichéd vanity projects that cut short the Hollywood careers of other pop stars like Mariah Carey and Britney Spears, Gaga excels in this “broken love story”, inhabiting the role with her usual passion and verve.

Saying that though, Ally’s rise to fame isn’t exactly worlds away from Gaga’s own. In fact, moments where people try and force the rising pop star to conform feel like they could have been ripped from the pages of her own autobiography, particularly when Ally discusses the various industry men who told her that she sounds great, but “you don’t look too great”. Gaga expanded on what it was like to open up like this during a press conference at the Venice Film Festival, revealing that her lack of makeup on screen left her feeling “completely vulnerable and completely bare”.

As country artist Jackson Maine, it’s Bradley Cooper who convinces Ally to push those kind of insecurities to the side early on and give stardom a shot, leading quickly to their first performance on stage together. Who knew that the voice behind Rocket Raccoon could sing so well? It’s not long before the pair are married and everything seems perfect between them both, yet even if you haven’t seen previous versions of A Star is Born, you’ll soon realise that their happiness isn’t meant to last.

Soon after they first meet, Maine tells Ally: “All you gotta do is trust me,” which is clearly Hollywood code for ‘shit’s about to hit the fan’, and this isn’t the only time that A Star is Born becomes as predictable as the stars themselves appearing in the night sky. The typical songwriting scenes set by a piano or on a tour bus all rear their head here too (albeit in a more believable way than normal), but fortunately, these generic story beats are livened up by other various cast members besides the central duo.

A humorous turn by Ally’s father (played by stand-up comedian Andrew Dice Clay) provides some light relief and Sam Elliott brings his signature gruffness to the role of Maine’s brother, Bobby. RuPaul’s Drag Race alumni Shangela and Willam briefly werk it too, stealing every short scene that they’re in. As you might expect though, A Star is Born is really Bradley Cooper’s film, and we mean that in every sense of the word.

Sure, the titular star might be Lady Gaga, but it’s Cooper who takes on the weightier material with a character that uses both music and alcohol as a means of escape after his parents died young. Gaga undoubtedly holds her own against the more seasoned actor, but his unforgettable Grammys performance and subsequent breakdown are truly the stuff that Oscars are made of.

Although the path that A Star is Born treads is well worn, there’s a raw honesty to the central relationship that Cooper taps into here, elevating the material far beyond the Glitters of this world by bringing out the very best in both himself and Gaga. Clint Eastwood was once attached to this project, yet it’s hard to imagine him taking on so many roles all at once with the same success.

Even if Cooper wasn’t acting, singing and co-writing the script, his direction alone is something to marvel at too. Handling both the frenetic performances on stage and the more intense moments of intimacy with equal assurance, Cooper admirably ensures that the drama of the piece takes precedence over the music, avoiding the usual pitfalls encountered by projects of this nature. Each performance is included to serve the narrative rather than Lady Gaga’s pop star ego, and the film as a whole is all the better for it.

At one point, Ally freaks out about her rise to fame, saying that “I don’t know who the hell I think I am”, yet Gaga has never seemed so sure of herself as she does here. Insisting that she and Cooper sing every song live on set, the powerhouse pop star belts out a whole album’s worth of new material. On new songs like ‘Shallow’ and ‘Look What I Found’, Gaga has evolved the piano/guitar driven sound of Joanne even further, displaying an artistic maturity far beyond her thirty-two years.

Stars in space are born when atoms are squeezed under enough pressure for their nuclei to undergo fusion. Here, two stars are born anew under the pressure of overwhelming expectations (totally the same thing, physicists) both shining brighter than ever before in a new chapter of their respective careers. A Star is Born might not be the life-changing movie that one very early and eager review claimed it to be, but with a winning combination of humour and heartbreak, Lady Gaga’s most important project in years certainly brings her closer than ever to glory.

Director: Bradley Cooper; Starring: Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, Andrew Dice Clay, Dave Chappelle, Sam Elliott; Running time: 136 minutes; Certificate: 15

A Star is Born will be released on October 5 in the UK and the US.

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