Despite all the publicity and hype, the Bruce Springsteen bio-pic, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, was pretty much dead on arrival when it opened in theaters this past weekend with an unimpressive take of $9.1 million in the U.S. and $16.1 million worldwide.
Here are potentially a few reasons why:
- Folks are turned off by his anti-Trump comments.
- Who really cares about the making of a folk album, in this case, Nebraska.
- When recently asked about the movie being made, he said, “I’m old and I don’t give a [crap] what I do now.” So maybe that’s it. In his later years he’s released numerous box sets, live albums and documentaries, so perhaps it’s been enough.
- Folks have enough trouble dealing with their own mental illness, let alone having to watch a rich liberal musician from New Jersey talking about his own struggles for two hours on the big screen.
While the film has a 60 percent approval rating on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, here’s what some have said.
David Fear of Rolling Stone: “There is also, of course, the 100 million-dollar question: What will Springsteen fans think of this? Some will find it dour to a fault. We don’t blame them. Others will wish it had more sequences like the one in the Power Station [recording studio], where Bruce and the band tear into ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ and heed [his manager Jon] Landau’s corny demand to ‘turn it down.’ We don’t blame them either, though despite the movie’s flaws, what Cooper has given audiences here is way more compelling than a live-action greatest-hits compilation.”
Manohla Dargis of The New York Times: “Jeremy Allen White, who’s best known from the FX series The Bear, doesn’t look like Springsteen and smartly, he and [director Scott] Cooper don’t try to fake a resemblance. Much like the man he plays, though, White has tremendous charisma and the kind of endlessly interesting face whose rough beauty and asymmetry draws you to him. His Bruce spends a fair amount of time by himself, and doesn’t speak the language of the therapeutically schooled. That means White needs to express the seemingly inexpressible, even as the character is finding the songs that will voice what he can’t, which the actor does with delicacy. In a movie filled with music that says so much to so many, some of the most memorable moments are the quieter ones, the lonely silences that at times separate Bruce from the world but also eventually help him return to it.”
Kyle Smith of The Wall Street Journal: “The film does a disservice to the windswept austerity of the record with clunky writing and cheesy directorial flourishes, such as having the Boss keep encountering himself as a boy recoiling from an abusive father. Mr. White’s tortured-soulful act is becoming tiresome, and Jeremy Strong turns in an equally overwrought performance as Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, who is meant to be a confidant but comes across as merely a sycophant. The film devolves into a puddle of tears in its final act.”
Chris Richards of The Washington Post: “Springsteen was reportedly a frequent visitor on the set of Deliver Me From Nowhere — undoubtedly pumping up the extras, and presumably stressing out the actors. Was he there to be flattered? Is that what this whole thing is for? Over the past decade, Springsteen has written a generous memoir, then transposed it into a Broadway performance residency, then filmed it for a Netflix special, and now he’s back on tour, speaking righteous truth to power between songs. He must feel known, loved, understood. Why bother funneling all of that through Hollywood’s pomp and corniness into a movie that’s only half good? Nebraska was a triumph because it refused to fulfill anyone’s expectations. Deliver Me From Nowhere valorizes that decision while missing its chance to do the same.”
